Dual-Container: Extending the EJB2.x Container to Support EJB3.0

In order to support EJB3.0, many open-source application server vendors have implemented a new container which is independent with the existing EJB2.x one. However, the functional redundancy between both of the containers increases the maintenance cost when the software are modified because of problems or new requirements. This paper proposes a Dual-container to support EJB2.x and EJB3.0 in a unified architecture. Software engineering perspective is applied, three principles including greatest-common-divisor, lease-common-multiple, and transparent intrusion, are presented to guide the construction of the architecture. We implemented the Dual-container in an open-source J2EE application server. The evaluation results show that the Dual-container is effective in reducing the functional redundancy and increasing the maintainability. We demonstrate that in a comparative analysis.