Abstract: A distributed application deployment engine uses declarative deployment data that describes deployment characteristics for application modules, and potential target environments. The engine uses the deployment data to potentially match a module to a deployment target. At some point, the modules may then be actually deployed on the identified deployment target. This may be performed for multiple modules in the distributed application, thereby deploying the distributed application in a distributed environment.

Abstract: An interactive user interface for displaying mappings between modules of a distributed application and deployment targets in a distributed environment. The user interface represents module items, deployment target items, and correlation items that represent various mappings of module items to deployment target items. In some cases, the manner in which each of these items is displayed may be altered in response to user input. The correlation itself may also be potentially altered in response to user input. Multiple solutions may be displayed in which there are different mappings of modules to target solutions.

Abstract: Various technologies and techniques are disclosed that automatically layout components/shapes on a design surface. The system receives input from a user to add components to the design surface. At an appropriate time, the system initiates an auto-layout process. The auto-layout process maps each shape in a particular set to a two-dimensional grid and uses the two-dimensional grid to assign an X and Y value to each shape. For any shape having a new X and Y value, the position of the shape is adjusted on the design surface. The system provides a visual indicator on the design surface to indicate that component positions are being adjusted. The system provides an undo feature to allow the user to undo the auto-layout process when desired.

Abstract: Mapping between a source object and a destination or target object uses techniques and functoids that provide an auto-linking feature in which mappings are automatically provided based solely on source and target field names, or, ignoring field names, field locations within hierarchy. Functoids provide support for callout to programming artifacts, such as custom programming logic embedded in .NET assemblies or custom XSLT, and table-looping to generate and map data into a target document even though that data did not exist in the map input.