The architect's tool chest
Yesterday I wrote about design decisions and cultures, and today I'll continue on a similar theme.
I've worked on at least four systems having large sets of parameters; i.e. values that depend on each other. One common reason to have a set of interdependent parameters may be that you want your system to be configurable to accomodate the needs of different customers, another may be that your system measures a number of values and computes other values from combinations of them. In each of these systems the solution to this problem was an object-oriented framework that holds the parameters and propagates value changes, triggering the computations of new values, etc.
This is a perfectly reasonable solution. In each case these frameworks were redesigned before they felt right. Nothing wrong with that, learning from experience is fine. These systems are all fairly successful. So, what is there to write about?
Well, there is another approach to the parameter problem: Constraint Logic Programming. Never heard of it? Neither had the designers of the parameter frameworks I mentioned. CLP has never been very fashionable and it's not backed by any major vendor, but it's been around for almost 20 years.
After evaluating the pros and cons of an OO framework and CLP, you might still go with the OO solution, but if you haven't even heard of CLP your range of choices is obviously more limited. An architect who wants to deliver business value needs to have a large tool chest and not be limited to what's in fashion at the moment or what the biggest vendors are pushing.

For an introduction to CLP, you can visit this site: http://clip.dia.fi.upm.es/~vocal/public_info/seminar_notes/node6.html