METHOD OF AUTOMATICALLY CONFIGURING A SYSTEM USING DIFFERENCES IN THE EXTERNAL APPEARANCE OF THE COMPONENTS

摘要

The aim of the invention is to provide an automatic, resouce-oriented method of configuring modular systems which configures a system by comparing resources of the same type but of different quality for compatibility, which is easy to monitor, as well as being efficient, flexible and suitable for use in a wide range of applications and which enables information of the types of component listed in a catalogue to be easily updated when changes are made or the component range expanded. In the method proposed, the following information is explicitly defined and stored: the different qualitites which the resources defined in the catalogue listing the types of component have, how the resources having different qualities are compared to each other in order to decide which of the resources provided are compatible with resources of a particular quality requested<. A system is configured by repeatedly comparing the requested resources with those provided with regard to type, size and compatibility. The method proposed stipulates how components are checked automatically for compatibility and how other components are selected if the required resources are not available.