Update applications with the console
Overview
Updating applications consists of adding a new file or module to an installed application, or replacing or removing an installed application, file or module.
Before you update the application files on a server, ensure that the files are assembled in deployable modules.
Next, refer to Ways to update application files and decide how to update your application files. You can update enterprise applications or modules using the console, the wsadmin tool, or Java MBean programming. These ways provide similar updating capabilities.
Further, ensure that the updated files can be installed to your deployment targets.
This topic describes how to update deployed applications or modules using the console.
Procedure
- Back up the installed application.
- Go to the Enterprise Applications page of the console. Click...
Applications | Enterprise Applications...in the console navigation tree.
- Export the application to an EAR file. Select the application you want uninstalled and click Export. Exporting the application preserves the binding information.
- With the application selected on the Enterprise Applications page, click Update.
- Under Specify the EAR, WAR, SAR or JAR module to upload and install:
- Ensure that Application to be updated refers to the application to be updated.
- Under Application update options, select the installed application, module, or file to update.
- If you selected the Replace the entire application or Replace or add a single module option:
- Click Next to display a wizard for updating application files.
- Complete the steps in the update wizard.
This update wizard, which is similar to the installation wizard, provides fields for specifying or editing application binding information.
For more information...
Note that the installation steps have the merged binding information from the new version and the old version. If the new version has bindings for application artifacts such as...
- EJB JNDI names
- EJB references
- resource references
...then those bindings will be part of the merged binding information. If new bindings are not present, then bindings are taken from the installed (old) version. If bindings are not present in the old version and if the default binding generation option is enabled, then the default bindings will be part of the merged binding information.
You can select whether to ignore bindings in the old version or ones in the new version.
- Click Finish.
- If you did not use the Manage modules page of the update wizard, after updating the application, map the installed application or module to servers or clusters.
Use the Manage modules page accessed from the Enterprise Applications page.
- Go to the Manage modules page. Click...
Applications | Enterprise Applications | application_name | Manage modules
- Specify the appserver where you want to install modules contained in your application and click OK.
On single-server products, you can deploy J2EE 1.4 modules to servers on Version 6.x nodes only.
On multiple-server products, you can deploy J2EE 1.4 modules to servers on V6.x nodes or to clusters that contain cluster members on V6.x nodes only.
Results
After replacement of a full application, the old application is uninstalled. After replacement of a module, file or partial application, the old installed module, file or partial application is removed from the installed application.
What to do next
After the application file or module installs successfully, do the following:
- If a changed application or module is deployed on a cluster, roll out the changes to all cluster members of the cluster on which the application or module is deployed.
Click Rollout Update on the Enterprise Applications page to propagate the changed configuration on all cluster members of the cluster on which the application or module is deployed. Rollout Update sequentially updates the configuration on the nodes that contain cluster members.
At the end of the Installing messages displayed by the console during application or module installation, click Manage applications to go to the Enterprise Applications page. Do not save changes to the configuration until after you roll out the changes.
- Save the changes to the configuration.
In the ND product, after you click Save the old application files are deleted and new files are copied when the configuration on the deployment manager synchronizes with the configuration on the node where the application is installed.
If the application is running when you update it, the application stops running before its files are copied to the destination directory of the node and restarts after the copy operation completes. Thus, the application is unavailable on the node during the time the node is synchronizing its configuration with the deployment manager.
- If needed, restart the application manually so the changes take effect.
If the application is updated while it is running, automatically stops the application or only its changed components, updates the application logic, and restarts the stopped application or its components.
- If the application you are updating is deployed on a server that has its application class loader policy set to Single, restart the server.
Ways to update application files
Related tasks
Troubleshooting deployment
Updating J2EE applications
Related Reference
Preparing for application update settings