====== Do you adapt or do you comply: on configuration, languages, and complex systems. ======

===== Research Context =====

The time of closed big monolithic systems imprisoning the user has all but disappeared. Users want to be free. Free to tweak and adjust a system to their business context, to their task at hand, to their liking. All to often we are confronted with system to which, we, the users need to adapt. 
We've all encountered administration software which frustrates the staff and users because it failed to adopt the actual processes and practices. We've all encountered software in which certain tasks are tedious and do not completely fit the task at hand. Currently we need to combe various tools, but that can be cumbersome or even impossible at times. We've all encountered software we like to use so much that we would like to contribute it. A typical example of the latter are games. Gamers all to often get involved in designing new levels, skins. etc. Getting beyond the esthetics can be a challenging undertaking. 

The time has come that systems must adapt to their users. Software vendors nowadays involve their customers beyond mere parameterization. The vendors have started to expose the internals of the software. Bulk of the vendors simply export their code in the form of an SDK. A recent example is the IPhone SDK. Other vendors choose to ship a programming language within their product. A well known example of this is VBA, which is found within Microsoft Office. As always, there exists a range of possible approaches between those two extremes that one can take.  The success of making a product more configurable is determined by choosing the right approach. One can for example not expect that kids learn a full fledge programming language for writing interactive levels for pokemon[REF].  It is clear that the capabilities of your users' play a significant role, but there are other factors to consider.

===== Thesis =====

In this thesis, we aim at a configuration language framework. We therefore investigate the possible configuration approaches, the decisions that need to be taken into account and the implementation challenges that are ahead. Finally, proof of concept implementations illustrate and validate our configuration language framework. 


===== Additional Opportunities =====

The thesis can be conducted in close cooperation with Sirris. Sirris is a company that offers other companies advice in choosing the right technology for the job. Their knowledge of the challenges companies face is an important asset for this research, as choosing the right software configuration approach is one of the key problems companies face. The opportunity to work hands-on on these problems is a rare. So take advantage of this! The thesis also fits our joint project with Sirris and other software engineering labs. Your work thus plays an important role in a bigger story.