Method and apparatus to support continuous availability by allowing the use of multiple concurrent versions of shared artifact libraries, with proper bind-drain semantics, for long-lived process application consumers

A computer program product comprising a computer usable medium including computer usable program code for updating multiple concurrent versions of shared artifact libraries, said computer program product including:

• computer usable program code for associating a set of shared artifact libraries with a consuming application for establishing shared artifact libraries upon which the consuming application has a dependency for artifacts;
• computer usable program code for responsive to starting a session, taking a snapshot of the set of shared artifact libraries associated with the consuming application in an active session;
• computer usable program code for updating the set of shared artifact libraries in response to changes to the set of shared artifact libraries becoming available;
• and
• computer usable program code for dispensing artifacts from the set of shared artifact libraries to the consuming application based on the snapshot of the session.