Patent ID: 7428733

Claim:
A method for deploying an application on a server, the server comprising a plurality of associated container types, the method comprising: storing in a deployment descriptor of the application a definition for an additional container type, wherein the additional container type is not among the plurality of associated container types and wherein the deployment descriptor contains the definition for the additional container type and one or more module declarations, wherein the definition for the additional container type indicates a module class and module factory class for the one or more modules, wherein each module declaration includes one or more instances of the additional container type within the application; storing the deployment descriptor of the application in an archive file; storing in the archive file one or more modules associated with the plurality of associated container types and one or more modules associated with the additional container type, wherein the one or more modules associated with the additional container type include code for implementing the additional container type defined in the deployment descriptor; loading the archive file onto the server and extracting files from the archive file; reading the deployment descriptor of the application; creating one or more containers for the one or more modules associated with the plurality of associated container types and one or more containers of the additional container type for the one or more modules associated with the additional container type; and deploying the one or more modules associated with the plurality of associated container types into their respective containers and one or more modules associated with the additional container type into the one or more containers of the additional container type.