A new configuration specification language to develop and deploy distributed ledger technology enabled dynamic applications for complex organizational models

Any new technology has a life cycle. Development, ascent, peak and decline periods. For blockchain technology, the successful primary implementation was done by combining several existing technologies. The research and development phase of it was done by the inventor of Bitcoin in this case. Blockchain too had its burst out period after the humongous success of Bitcoin. Bitcoin took everyone by surprise with its ingenuity, effectiveness, and efficiency in achieving it. The clever way of completely removing a centralised control with the help of cryptography and chaining of data with Merkle tree opened a whole new approach to consensus mechanisms, distributed computing, and data storage technologies. Blockchain, the underlying technology of bitcoin got the attraction of several industrial domains other than finance. This led to a boom of research in making use of blockchain in varied domains including enterprise environments where distributed decision making and validation is a necessity. Even though the enterprise solutions need the distributed consensus, computing, storage properties and most importantly the immutability characteristic of the blockchain, they also need a slightly different set of other properties like granular control over the network. They need protected blockchain network where only pre-approved, permissioned parties could get access to read, write, and modify the records. Enterprises also require full control over their business logic. Businesses have varying and evolving business logic. Enterprise solution providers need a way to fully utilise all features of blockchain to their business logic, which is somehow limited in the initial versions of cryptocurrency-based blockchains. These different set of requirements and the rapid developmental changes of blockchain technology initiated the development of a different set of enterprise Blockchain solutions. Enterprises need reliable and stable tools and methodologies to build their solutions. As blockchain is getting matured it goes through rapid changes and improvements. The characteristics of rapid development introduce instability. Enterprises cannot risk their business on the ever-changing platform, they need longevity. Enterprises prefer stability and reliability over new and rapidly changing features. The rapid development of blockchain also creates a lot of innovation silos. These solutions focus on a particular property of blockchain and addresses one or a few of requirements in a detailed manner over others. In general, choices while building a blockchain solution is high as it is a combination of several other technologies. At several stages of building up a blockchain system has a lot of places where the user must choose an option from a plethora of choices such as cryptographic algorithm, consensus algorithm, data dissemination etc. Several industry giants have come together to create a stable, well defined, and supported blockchain solutions for enterprise purposes. This doctoral thesis provides an overview of these enterprise blockchain solutions in general and analyses few well known and most used blockchain technological solutions. The analysis of enterprise blockchain solutions discusses the key properties, differences between a set of available solutions. This analysis helps to make the decision easier when selecting a blockchain/DLT solution. It also helps in selecting a blockchain solution for application development and designs a set of parametric software tools to support the complex and expensive configuration activities related to the deployment of corporate blockchains in distributed and unsafe environments.