The application server must adhere to the principles of least functionality by providing only essential capabilities.

Application servers provide a myriad of differing processes, features and functionalities. Some of these processes may be deemed to be unnecessary or too unsecure to run on a production DoD system. Application servers must provide the capability to disable or deactivate functionality and services that are deemed to be non-essential to the server mission or can adversely impact server performance, for example, disabling dynamic JSP reloading on production application servers as a best practice.