Reconfiguration in the Enterprise JavaBean Component Model

ISBN:

Abstract:

Reconfiguration is the process of applying planned changes
to the communication, interconnection, componentization, or functionality
of a deployed system. It is a powerful tool for achieving a variety of
desirable properties of large-scale, distributed systems, including evolvability,
adaptability, survivability, and continuous availability. Current
approaches to reconfiguration are inadequate: some allow one to describe
a system’s range of configurations for a relatively broad class of system
architectures, but do not provide a mechanism for actually carrying out
a reconfiguration; others provide a mechanism for carrying out certain
kinds of limited reconfigurations, but assume a specialized system architecture
in order to do so. This paper describes our attempt at devising a
reconfiguration mechanism for use with the popular and widely available
Enterprise JavaBean (EJB) component container model. We describe
extensions to the basic services provided by EJB to support the mechanism,
a prototype implementation, and a case study of its application
to a representative component-based distributed system.