J2EE packaging, deployment and reconfiguration using a general component model

This paper describes a case study of enhancing the deployment process in J2EE application servers (AS), and more precisely the services building such servers and the applications executing on the servers. We show how, by following a component-based approach to the design of the server, we address the versioning and licensing issues raised by the fact that a J2EE server is built out of heterogeneous, third-party software. As a proof of concept, we present a re-engineered version of the JOnAS J2EE server implemented using Fractal, a component model providing flexible control capabilities and hierarchical composition. We describe how Fractal packaging together with a JOnAS-specific deployment system are used to deploy and reconfigure our Fractal-based version of the JOnAS server. Finally, we show how the same model and packaging can be used to deploy applications executing on the server.