Peapod is a lightweight container. Peapod lets you take a plain Java class, an interface and a small fragment of XML metadata and hand off responsibility to a host. The combination of an interface, and implementing class and the metadata is a component; the host is Peapod. The responsibilities the host can take over are many. Here are some that Peapod handles:
* hot-deploy and undeploy of JARs: just drop in a directory or remove a file to install or uninstall a component
* intelligent dependency management: components are active only when all their declared dependencies have been satisfied--remove a component and all its dependents gracefully shut down; re-add it and they wake up
* code versioning: declare you require version 1.0 and seamlessly receive a access to facilities provided by a 1.1 implementation--you can even have both versions running in the same container
* combining the above three you get hot upgrades: undeploy a component, thus putting the dependents to sleep, deploy a newer version and not have to restart at all, enabling very high uptimes with a single lightweight server
* external configuration by metadata
* declarative aspect-oriented programming: use metadata to select code to insert at runtime between method calls made to an interface or even to a single method--tracing, security, transactions, single-threading, and more; the container includes several useful aspects you can use out of the box
- Category: Inversion of Control
- License: Other
- HomePage: http://www.peapod.org/
