mKernel: A manageable kernel for EJB-based systems

Due to the ever increasing complexity of todays Enterprise Applications (EA), component technology has become the major means to keep the development of such applications under control. Although container technology provides tools to deploy component-based EAs, high demands regarding, e.g., availability, security and fault-tolerance combined with constantly changing user demands, varying loads and rapid change of business processes, introduce the need for adjusting systems in regular intervals without halting, restructuring and re-deploying the system as a whole. Consequently, the administration of EAs is a very complex task which has to be performed during runtime of the managed system. Hence, techniques from the area of Autonomic Computing (AC) that allow for controlling and changing a running system without the need to go back to development can become highly useful. This paper presents the design rationale and overall architecture of a manageable kernel that equips the broadly accepted Enterprise Java Beans 3.0 (EJB) component standard for enterprise applications with additional facilities in order to make EJB components AC manageable at runtime. The system was realized EJB 3.0-compliant and provides container infrastructure enhancements as well as a tool needed to adapt standard EJB components.