In accordance with an embodiment, described herein is a system and method for supporting multiple partitions and edit sessions in a multitenant application server environment. In accordance with an embodiment, a first administrator or user can obtain a named edit session for use with a partition, make changes, and then activate those changes. Another administrator or user can create a named edit session in parallel. If there are conflicts between a concurrent change and changes being made by another user, the administrator will receive an error when activating the changes. At that point, the administrator can resolve the conflicts and activate the changes. Upon activation, the changes in the edit session will be applied to a global edit configuration.