A system and method for configuring software components are provided. A number of elements comprising configuration data are defined. For a software component that is to be configured, a file containing a subset of the elements defining the software component, the properties that must be administered to configure the software component, and the run-time parameters for the software component is created. The file is parsed by a management service. The management service uses the data contained in the file to generate the content of a user interface for collecting configuration data from a user. Collected configuration data is validated and persisted to the data model to complete the integration of the software component into the larger system.