Patent ID: 8020171

Claim:
A method for deploying an application on a server, comprising: storing in a deployment descriptor for the application one or more module definitions and one or more module declarations, wherein the one or more module definitions indicate a new container type, and wherein the one or more module declarations reference code for implementing an instance of the new container type defined in the deployment descriptor, and wherein the instance of the new container type is not among a plurality of container types associated with the server as originally configured; storing in an archive file on a computer readable storage medium the application, the deployment descriptor, and one or more modules supported by the server as originally configured; parsing the archive file of the application; creating one or more containers for the one or more modules supported by the server as originally configured, and one or more new container type instances for the one or more module definitions using the code referenced in the one or more module declarations; deploying the one or more modules supported by the server as originally configured into the one or more module's respective containers, and the one or more module definitions associated with the new container type into the one or more module definition's respective new container type instance; and wherein the new container type instance is available to be utilized by the application.