Patent Document ID: 8214372
Application ID: 12465036

Base Claim:
1. A method comprising: obtaining configuration parameter name-value pairs for each of a plurality of component instances, wherein the plurality of configuration parameters are obtained from a deployed software solution; identifying a candidate set of configuration dependencies between different ones of the plurality of component instances in the deployed software solution, based on the configuration parameter name-value pairs obtained, wherein the candidate set of configuration dependencies comprise true dependencies and false dependencies; rank-ordering the candidate set of configuration dependencies to obtain a rank-ordered list, wherein the true dependencies get a higher rank than the false dependencies in the rank-ordered list; and conducting web queries using pairs of the parameter names to compute at least one of a weight and a strength of dependency between members of a given one of the pairs of the parameter names, wherein the rank-ordering step takes into account the computed one of a weight and a strength of dependency.

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Claim 7:
7. The method of claim 1 , further comprising providing a system, wherein the system comprises distinct software modules, each of the distinct software modules being embodied on a tangible computer-readable recordable storage medium, and wherein the distinct software modules comprise a configuration extractor module, a candidate set generator module, and a rank producer module; wherein: the obtaining of the configuration parameter name-value pairs is carried out by the configuration extractor module executing on at least one hardware processor; the identifying of the candidate set of configuration dependencies is carried out by the candidate set generator module executing on the at least one hardware processor; and the rank-ordering of the candidate set of configuration dependencies is carried out at least by the rank producer module executing on the at least one hardware processor.