Patent ID: 8161456

Claim:
A method for managing a configuration of heterogeneous software artifacts through a common central configuration representation, the method comprising: adding a plurality of software artifacts from an initial software solution to a heterogeneous configuration tool; utilizing the heterogeneous configuration tool to extract out artifact-level configuration parameters of selected software artifacts from the heterogeneous configuration tool, wherein at least two of the selected software artifacts are of different artifact types; presenting all extracted artifact-level configuration parameters, of the selected software artifacts, in a single representation; mapping a subset of the presented extracted artifact-level configuration parameters to a set of solution-level parameters; exposing the set of solution-level parameters to a subsequent software solution, wherein the artifact-level configuration parameters from the initial software solution are never directly exposed or manipulatable by the subsequent software solution; setting, for the subsequent software solution, parameters for one or more of the solution-level parameters; and mapping the parameters for the subsequent software solution back to the artifact-level configuration parameters of the subsequent software solution.