Towards a Self-Managing Software Patching Process Using Black-Box Persistent-State Manifests

We describe a new approach to self-managing software patching. We identify visibility into patch impact as the key missing component in automating the current patching process, and we present a suite of components that provides this visibility by constructing black-box persistent-state manifests through self-monitoring of dependencies. Additionally, we use the component suite to measure the actual impact of recent patches on several important commercial applications.