Patent ID: 7506327

Claim:
A computer based system for automatically maintaining at least one deployment descriptor, comprising at least one computer and: a parser operable to generate a representation of the at least one deployment descriptor; a generator operable to create the at least one deployment descriptor; a validator operable to validate the at least one deployment descriptor; a graphical user interface (GUI) operable to at least invoke the parser; wherein the GUI can include a user-selectable resource hierarchy, settings pane, message area, and toolbar and wherein when a node in the user-selectable resource hierarchy is selected, displaying at least one field in the GUI; wherein the at least one field corresponds to a plurality of values in a plurality of deployment descriptor files; wherein the system automatically generates a replacement deployment descriptor based on at least one application source code file associated with the at least one deployment descriptor if the at least one deployment descriptor is defective; and wherein the system is operable to automatically deploy an application associated with the at least one deployment descriptor; wherein the validator is further operable to generate an error when it encounters a syntactic or semantic fault in the at least one deployment descriptor's file, use the GUI to display an error message to a user, the message being selectable by the user, match the node corresponding to the error in the selectable message in response to the user's selection of the message, cause the fields of said node to be highlighted in the resource hierarchy, and display a notification to the user in the GUI wherein the notification includes suggestions for the user to correct said fields.