A system and method are described for managing a plurality of application
servers. In one embodiment, the application servers are organized into
groups referred to as "instances." Each instance includes a group of
redundant application servers and a dispatcher for distributing service
requests to each of the application servers. In addition, a central
message passing architecture is defined which allows the various
instances to communicate with one another. In one embodiment, a
hierarchical configuration data object is stored within a database and is
centrally accessible by all of the servers from all of the instances. The
hierarchical configuration data object organizes stores binary data
(e.g., *.jar files) within a common binary directory and series of
sub-directories, thereby simplifying application server management in an
enterprise network.