Specselector

Specselector is a software component or library designed to choose a specification from a pool that best meets a defined set of requirements or constraints. It operates by receiving a request profile that describes desired features, capabilities, performance, or costs, and a catalog of candidate specifications, each annotated with attributes such as version, compatibility, and resource usage. The core function is to evaluate candidates against the request and return the best match, or an ordered list of matches, according to a chosen strategy.

Common selection strategies include exact-match scoring, partial or fuzzy matching, constraint satisfaction, and rule-based ranking. A specselector may support weighted attributes, allowing certain requirements to carry more importance than others. It can also perform normalization of attributes, handle missing data gracefully, and provide rationale or scoring metadata to explain why a candidate was chosen.

Typical workflow involves validating inputs, normalizing specifications, applying the chosen evaluation criteria, selecting the top candidate, and addressing ties through predefined tie-break rules or by returning multiple close matches. In practice, specselectors are used in product configurators, service plan or API version negotiations, hardware compatibility checks, and software feature gating, where a precise alignment between requested and available specifications is necessary.

Variations include rule-based selectors, weighted scoring selectors, and constraint-based selectors that solve for feasibility. Related concepts include capability negotiation, configuration management, and constraint satisfaction problems.