Building configurable applications in Java

There are many reasons why applications may require configuration, however the one which dominates Java applications is that of security restrictions. Because an application may be provided different capabilities by different users, it becomes difficult to write “build-once, run-anywhere” applications. Insisting that all security sensitive applications execute within controlled or restricted environments may limit the types of application which can be built. Therefore, we describe how we have constructed a configuration infrastructure in Java which allows applications to dynamically adapt themselves to the types of security restrictions that exist when they are executed. Because the system does not change the language it is portable across Java implementations. We also describe how we have used this system to build a toolkit for the construction of electronic commerce applications, which allow atomic transactions to span Web browsers and servers