1 COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) devices are capable of executing powerful, distributed algorithms. Very large, adaptive systems can be created by simply integrating these devices, not by creating new devices, algorithms or external control systems. The principal integration method is configuration: every device is designed to have a finite set of configuration parameters that can be set to definite values. These parameters are static in that, unlike the device’s dynamic state, these do not change during the device’s normal operation. Inspite of the ubiquity of the configuration method, there is no “science” for it. There are no tools which let one specify global, end-to-end system functionality requirements at a high level, reason about these, and have these compiled into device configurations. On the other hand, it is inherently difficult to develop this science because of the large conceptual gap between global, end-to-end requirements and device configurations. A middlewar...