Patent ID: 8589903

Claim:
A computer-based system comprising: a computer, including a computer readable storage medium and processor; a patch management system, executing on the computer, which can load one or more patches to a software program, wherein each patch being couple with metadata specific to the patch and a patch ID which the patch management system uses to identify the patch, wherein the patch management system loads the one or more patches according to an execution level adapted to determine if a set of patches should be evaluated for installation, and an individual patch level adapted to evaluate individual patch entries for installation; an install registry comprising dependency data which indicates which software components are stored on a system and tracks software component dependencies, wherein the software component dependencies include an indication of which software components are to be loaded together and which software components conflict; a global product registry which indicates the software component dependencies of a software product line and provides the software component dependencies to the install registry; a patch catalog which indicates the patches and patch dependencies; and an installer to install the patches and the software components of the software program according to the evaluated set of patches and the evaluate individual patch entries, the installer adapted to interpret the dependency data provided by the install registry and the metadata couple to the patch to determine which patches and which software components are to be loaded, and, in response, to instruct the patch management system to automatically load the determined patches and the software components to the software program according to the software component dependencies and the patch dependencies.