Component-based deployment for web applications: Experiences with duct tape and glue

The software engineering community touts component-based software engineering as a solution for many of its woes including reducing cycle time, reducing costs, increasing productivity, allowing easier integration to name just a few. Indeed, many Web-based systems are now built with open-source and vendor provided component technologies. While these advances have led to improvements in the development process, they have also led to a great deal of pressure on downstream processes as these systems must be deployed, tuned, and supported. The complexities in deploying and supporting component-based software for distributed and Web-based applications are not understood in the academic or professional communities. This chapter stresses the need for addressing this problem by presenting component-based software for Web applications from a deployment perspective, characterizing the issues through real-world experiences with highly component-based applications, and presents strategies and directions for the community to pursue.