Axis Deployment Model
Axis2 deployment introduced the notion of a Javaâ„¢ 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE)-like deployment mechanism, where a developer can bundle all the class files, library files, resources files, and configuration files together as an archive file, and drop it to specified location in the file system.
The concept of hot deployment and hot update is not a new technical term (particularly for those versed in the concepts of a Web services platform), but for Apache Axis it is a new feature. Therefore Axis2 was developed by keeping room for “hot” deployment features.
Hot deployment: The capability of deploying service while system is up and running. System availability is very important in a realtime system or business environment. If the system is down even for a moment, the loss might be substantial and it may affect the lifetime of the business. However, in the meantime it is required to add new services to the system and if this can be done without shutting down the servers, that would be a great achievement. So Axis2 addresses that and provides web service hot deployment ability, where you do not need to shut down the system to deploy a new Web service. What needs to be done is to drop the required web service archive into the services directory in the repository. Then the deployment model will automatically deploy the service and make it available to you.
Hot update: The ability of making changes to an existing web service without shutting down the system. This is an important feature and required in a testing environment. However, it is not advisable to use hot update in real time system, because hot update could result in the system leading into an unknown state. Additionally, there is the possibility of loosening the existing service data of that service. To prevent this, Axis2 comes with the hot update parameter set to false by default.