Declarative Configuration

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Declarative Configuration specifies the required state of a subject without prescribing the sequence of operations used to establish that state.

The configured subject may include:

• An Infrastructure Environment
• An Infrastructure Configuration
• A platform
• A service
• A software component
• A network
• A computing resource
• A storage resource
• A security control

Declarative Configuration may specify:

• Required resources
• Required configuration values
• Relationships among resources
• Required capabilities
• Applicable constraints
• Applicable Baseline references
• Applicable Acceptance Criteria
• Desired operational state

A tool or process evaluates the declared state and determines the operations required to establish or preserve that state.

Declarative Configuration differs from procedural configuration:

• Declarative Configuration specifies the required result
• Procedural configuration specifies the operations and sequence used to produce the result

Declarative Configuration does not prohibit an implementation from using an execution sequence. The distinction concerns whether the configuration itself prescribes that sequence.

Declarative Configuration may form part of Infrastructure as Code when represented as a machine-readable Artifact.

configuration that specifies the required state of a subject without prescribing the sequence of operations used to establish that state

Dido Solutions, Inc. and Jackrabbit Consulting, Inc.

Declarative Configuration may be:

• Human-readable
• Machine-readable
• Version-controlled
• Reusable
• Parameterized
• Inherited
• Generated
• Composed from multiple controlled inputs

A declarative representation does not by itself establish that the configuration is:

• Valid
• Approved
• Authorized for application
• Compatible with a target platform
• Successfully deployed
• Compliant with an applicable Baseline

Separate requirements govern those determinations.

The term does not require a particular configuration language, schema, file format, deployment tool, cloud provider, operating system, or implementation technology.

A Declarative Configuration specifies that an Infrastructure Environment contains three compute resources, persistent storage, defined network relationships, identity services, logging, and monitoring. The configuration does not prescribe the sequence in which the deployment system creates those resources.