Microkernel architecture: Making application servers open to change

Application server software is required to be highly adaptive and reconfigurable so as to satisfy the changing requirements of various component-based applications in enterprise computing environment. To meet this goal, an open-to-change architecture is a must, which challenges almost all distributed system software designers. This paper describes our work on designing an adaptive J2EE (Java 2 platform, Enterprise edition) application server named PKUAS. PKUAS has a microkernel based, service oriented architecture, which allows different services to be plugged into it and get managed conveniently. The PKUAS microkernel has well-defined structure that strictly separates management concern from business concern, which brings excellent modularity and extensibility to PKUAS without causing much performance degradation. The practices show that this approach can effectively make application servers open to change.Engineering, Electrical & ElectronicSCI(E)EI0ARTICLE3443-4481