Partitioning of Java applications to support dynamic updates

Abstract

The requirement for 24/7 availability of distributed applications complicates their maintenance and evolution as shutting down such applications to perform updates may not be an acceptable solution. Therefore, there is a need to be able to update these applications dynamically, i.e. without shutting them down. Current solutions for building dynamically updatable Java applications require that applications either are prepared for updates from the outset, comply with a specific framework, or are executed in a modified virtual machine. In this work, we present a novel approach to creating dynamically updatable Java applications based on the concept of partitioning applications into units of dynamic updates and illustrate how this approach better addresses the problems of adding update support to existing applications than traditional approaches.