state of the art in router configuration

after a study on bgp misconfiguration (http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/ratul/bgp/index.html), i am beginning to wonder what the state of the art in router configuration is. a quick search on the web did not yield anything interesting. thoughts on the matter from guys who configure routers would be appreciated. 1. how do most operators configure their bgp (text editor or some high-level configuration tool)? 2. are there "configuration checkers" out there that would check whether an operator has not made a common error while modifying configuration? 3. when misconfigurations do happen, how are they detected? thanks, -- ratul