1.3.10 Protection of Configuration State

A conglomeration can be configured to disable configuration changes to the conglomeration and to the component configuration entries and roles contained in that conglomeration. A conglomeration can also be configured to disable its deletion. A conglomeration's configuration includes properties that indicate whether it is changeable or can be deleted, and optionally enable a client to change this configuration. Additionally, in catalog version 4.00 and catalog version 5.00, a partition can be configured to disable changes to all conglomerations in the partition, and to disable deletion of conglomerations in the partition or creation of new conglomerations in the partition.

The primary purpose of these configuration properties is to prevent accidental changes to a conglomeration by an administrator, not to act as a security measure. Changing a conglomeration that is marked as not changeable is usually possible by first marking the conglomeration as changeable and by then making the desired configuration changes. However, there might be conglomerations in a COMA server's catalog for which configuration is fixed because, for example, modifying the configuration would impact system-wide stability. Such a conglomeration is said to be a protected conglomeration.