Today at a design meeting, we discussed the topic of where to store the configuration and state of a distributed application.
It turns out that at this meeting, some developers understand different things when they hear a configuration or state. Some even think that configuration and state are the same thing.
My very brief understanding is that the configuration describes how you want the system to behave, and the system must analyze this configuration and take actions to achieve a certain state that reflects the implementation and consolidation of this config.
For example, an Apache server may have a configuration that reports that it has 15 to 30 workflows. When the server starts, it will most likely start 15 of them, reaching the state of 15 work processes. As requests arrive, he can change his state to have up to 30 active workflows.
I could not, however, convince the developers that the two concepts are different, and googling does not give me more eloquent links that explain better than I can, that I have an almost obvious difference.
Any suggestions or links on how to explain this better? Or am I wrong?
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