Enhancing the management of a J2EE application server using a component-based architecture

In this paper we describe our work on improved management of middleware. We argue that a component-based approach to design of middleware results in greatly enhanced and easily extensible management capabilities. As a proof of concept, we present our re-engineered, component-based version of JOnAS, an open-source J2EE server. We describe how we have redesigned and reimplemented JOnAS using fractal, a novel component model that provides flexible control capabilities and hierarchical composition. Next we show how such adaptation allows us to enhance the management functionalities, and in particular how it allows building management systems for both centralized and distributed environments. We mainly focus on the configuration and deployment functionalities we have developed for J2EE servers in a cluster environment.