Defining deployment configurations for enterprise applications targeting a WAS

The WebSphere® Application Server Deployment editor, also referred to as the Enhanced EAR editor, is used to edit server configurations for a WAS. The server configuration data that you specify in this editor gets embedded within the application itself. This improves the administration process of publishing to a WAS when installing a new application to an existing local or remote WAS by preserving the existing server configuration. The following topics describe how to set up configurations, such as data sources, for a local and remote WAS.

Restrictions:

• The WAS Deployment editor is supported for enterprise applications targeting a WAS v6.0, or later.

• If the WAS Deployment editor is opened and changes are made to its dependant files either on the file system or using another editor, these changes do not reload in the editor. To refresh the changes, close and reopen the WAS Deployment editor. In the case the enterprise application project is at specification-level 1.2, 1.3 or 1.4, to close and reopen the WAS Deployment editor perform this action on the Application Deployment Descriptor editor.

To locate the WAS Deployment editor, complete the following steps:

1. Switch to the Java™ EE perspective.

2. The location of the WAS Deployment editor depends on the specification-level of your enterprise application project:

   • If your enterprise application (EAR) project is at 1.2, 1.3 or 1.4 specification-level, complete the following steps:

     1. In the Enterprise Explorer view, expand your enterprise application project folder.

     2. Under the enterprise application project folder for which you want add or edit server configurations, double-click the

        Deployment Descriptor to open the Application Deployment Descriptor editor.

     3. Select the

        Deployment tab at the bottom of the editor.

     Restriction: Before adding or removing J2EE modules, using the

     Module page in the Application Deployment Descriptor editor, first click the

     Deployment tab to activate the functions in the deployment page. Then add or remove your modules from the Module page. You need to complete this task for each Application Deployment Descriptor editor session that you want to add or remove modules from the Module page.

   • If your enterprise application (EAR) project is at 5.0 specification-level, complete the following steps:

     1. In the Enterprise Explorer view, right-click your enterprise application project folder.

     2. Select

        Java EE | Open WAS Deployment.

• Setting up a server to test data sources for an enterprise application targeted for a WAS
  Use the WAS Deployment editor to define data sources for a specific application for a remote or local WAS.

• Adding embedded resource adapters to an enterprise application target for a WAS
  Resource adapters are sets of related classes that let an application access a resource such as data, or an application on a remote server, often called an Enterprise Information System (EIS).

• Setting class loader policy to an enterprise application targeted for a WAS
  Using the WAS Deployment editor, you can define the class loader policy for a specific application targeting a remote or local WAS.

• Adding substitution variables to an enterprise application targeted for a WAS
  A substitution variable is a configuration property that can be used to provide a parameter for any value in a WAS configuration. The variable has a name and a value to be used in place of that name wherever the variable name is located within the configuration files.

• Adding JAAS authentication to an enterprise application targeted for a WAS
  The Java Authentication and Authorization Service (JAAS) version 1.0 extends the Java 2 Security Architecture of the Java 2 Platform with additional support for authentication and for enforcing access control upon users. The development environment supports the JAAS architecture and extends the access control architecture to support role-based authorization for J2EE resources including servlet, JSP, and EJB components. JAAS maps an authenticated WAS user identity to a set of user authentication data (user ID and password) for a specified back-end Enterprise Information System (EIS).

• Adding a shared library to an enterprise application targeted for a WAS
  Shared library allows you to specify a container-wide list of library entries that is used when deploying an application.

• Adding a virtual host alias to an enterprise application targeted for a WAS
  You can configure virtual host aliases in conjunction with ports for a WAS. A virtual host is a single host machine to resemble multiple host machines. An alias is the domain name system (DNS) host name and port number used by a client to form the URL request for a Web application resource (such as a servlet, JSP or HTML page). For example, an alias is the "myhost:8080" portion of the URL http://myhost:8080/servlet/snoop.

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