Patent ID: 7912804

Claim:
A method for providing change management in a distributed system comprising: compiling a policy for change management in the distributed system, the policy includes at least one policy rule based on an event-condition-action (ECA) framework with a pre-condition and a post-condition to an action in the policy rule, wherein the pre-condition is separate from a condition of the policy rule and indicates a prior condition in the distributed system that enables the action, and the post-condition indicates a subsequent condition in the distributed system that results from the action; receiving at least one event indicating a change in the distributed system; determining that the at least one received event triggers the at least one policy rule; generating, by a computer, a workflow to manage the change in the distributed system based on the at least one triggered policy rule, wherein the at least one policy rule includes at least two policy rules, and generating the workflow includes determining whether one of the at least two policy rules includes an action therein with a pre-condition that is partially satisfied by a post-condition of an action in another one of the at least two policy rules; and initiating one or more actuators in the distributed system to dynamically configure or deploy components in the distributed system to execute the workflow, wherein determining that the at least one received event triggers the at least one policy rule comprises determining that the at least one received event triggers the at least two policy rules, and wherein generating a workflow to manage the change in the distributed system comprises: identifying dependencies among the actions in the at least two triggered policy rules; and performing enforcement semantics to specify an execution order of the actions in the at least two triggered policy rules based on the identified dependencies, wherein the enforcement semantics specify that all reachable rules in the workflow are enforced for execution, and if a rule to be executed cannot be reached the workflow is not discarded.