Question on dynamic configuration of distributed application

["Rich Smith (rjsmith2)" <rj...@cisco.com>]

Hi, all.  I'm working on evaluation of Tuscany Java, and need some
advice on a
particular configuration/use-case that we are planning for our
application.
 
The application will be scalable from a low-end deployment where it runs
on a
single server to a high-end, distributed deployment, running on several
servers.
SCA and Tuscany seem like a good fit for this.
 
In the high-end case, there will be several instances of "back-end
servers", each
of which will run different instances of the same components.  The
front-end will
keep a mapping of which back-end server to use for which resources, and
so this
is _not_ going to require any kind of load balancing.
 
So far, I've figured out that I can register the back-end server
components using
separate service names, and just get those service references using the
appropriate
names.
 
However, I want to configure the back-ends using our application and not
using
static files (as in the calculator-distributed sample) because it will
be necessary
to allow customers to add back-end servers as they need to increase
capacity.
 
The thought of having to regenerate all of the .composite files does not
appeal to
me, and I don't really want to generate five copies of the same file
with different
service names.
 
What is the best approach for this?  Is there something I can do using
SPI to
dynamically configure a distributed Tuscany Java application?  (It's
probably okay
if restart is required somewhere, but it would be even better if not.)
 
Please let me know.
 
Also, I've been having trouble subscribing to the Tuscany mailing list.
(Sent mail
to the subscribe alias a few times, but haven't received any mail at
all.)  Any tips
on what I'm doing wrong there would be good as well :-)
 
     --Rich