Container-Less Deployment

People use the term container to refer to very different things. In the original usage, a container was something that carried its content from one location to another without changing anything inside. However, when servers were introduced, only one aspect was emphasized the ability to hold an application to contain it. Also, another meaning was added to provide life-supportive infrastructure so that the container's content (an application) can not only survive but also be active and respond to the external requests. Such a redefined notion of a container was applied to web servers (servlet container), application servers (an application container with or without an EJB container), and other software facilities that provided the supportive environment for applications. Sometimes, even the JVM itself was called a container, but this association did not survive, probably, because the ability to actively engage (execute) the content does not align well with the original...