Towards dynamic configuration of distributed applications

Configuring distributed applications at deployment time requires the introduction of high-level features such as transaction and synchronization into application code. Component models like CORBA Component Model (CCM) or Enterprise Java Beans (EJB) allow programmers to declare in deployment descriptors which services have to be plugged into components. However, these approaches do not allow a dynamic integration of new services. In this paper, we propose a reflexive approach allowing service integration into a component at runtime. When a new service is added to a component, the combination with existing services is managed dynamically by the platform.