Part of installing and upgrading client components is configuring those components and maintaining their configuration. As far as DCOM is concerned, the single most important configuration information is the server machine that runs the components needed by a client.
With code download and the class store, this configuration information can be managed from a central location. A simple change to the configuration information and installation packages updates all the clients transparently.
Another technique to manage client configuration is through the use of the referral components described in Section 0, "Load Balancing." All clients connect to this referral component, which contains all the configuration information and returns the appropriate component to each client. Simply changing the central referral component changes all clients.
Some components, typically server components, require additional component-specific configuration. These components can use DCOM to expose additional interfaces, which allow changes to the configuration and retrieval of the current configuration. Using DCOM's security infrastructure, developers can make these interfaces available only to administrators with the appropriate access permissions. The broad support for rapid development tools makes it easy to write elegant front-end applications that use the administrative interfaces. The same interfaces can be used for automated configuration changes using simple scripting languages like Visual Basic Script or Java Script.
Code download and the class store can be used to centrally configure components. Referral components are an efficient and elegant way to further centralize configuration information. Components can expose additional DCOM interfaces only visible and accessible to administrators, allowing the same DCOM infrastructure to be used for configuration and monitoring of components.