Patent ID: 7653902

Claim:
A method of searching for components in a computing environment for deployment of software, the method being executed by a deployment unit and comprising: receiving, from software to be deployed, a deployment descriptor which describes a requirement of the software; storing a system landscape descriptor which represents a snapshot of the computing environment by describing the components of the computing environment; providing a system model description defining grammar and semantics to be used for validation of the deployment descriptor and the system landscape descriptor; providing an optimization metric including optimization policies, the optimization metric being separate from the deployment descriptor and the optimization policies being implemented by using corresponding functions; receiving, by the deployment unit, a request to determine which of the components is suitable for deployment of the software, the request including a constraint and an indication for selection of one of the optimization policies, the constraint being separate from the deployment descriptor and the optimization metric; verifying, by using the system model description and a processor in the deployment unit, that the deployment descriptor and the system landscape descriptor refer to a common system model and use common grammar and semantics; filtering, from the stored system landscape descriptor, description of at least one of the components not to be evaluated during the requested determination, when verification is successful, the filtration being based on the constraint, the deployment descriptor and one of the optimization policies selected using the indication, and being performed by the processor before running and deployment of the software; performing, by using the processor, the requested determination by generating a list of suitable components whose description in the filtered system landscape descriptor matches the requirement described in the deployment descriptor; and ranking the matches according to one of the optimization policies selected using the indication, wherein the matches are ranked by determining levels identifying a quality of match corresponding to the suitable components in the list by using one of the functions and by comparing the levels with a required level defined in the deployment descriptor.