WebSphere Enhanced EAR
The Enhanced EAR is a normal J2EE EAR file, but with additional configuration information for resources required by J2EE applications.
Resources supported by the Enhanced EAR and the scope in which they are created...
Resource Scope JDBC providers Application Data sources Application Resource adapters Application JMS resources Application Substitution variables Application Class loader policies Application Shared libraries Server JAAS authentication aliases Cell Virtual hosts Cell The Enhanced EAR has been improved with V6.1 to include support for J2C Resource Adapters (RAR files) and JMS resources.
J2C RARs can be configured either as embedded or external resources. An embedded RAR is packaged within an EAR, deployed as a part of J2EE application installation, and is removed when the application is uninstalled from the server. An external RAR is packaged as a stand-alone RAR file, is deployed explicitly on a WebSphere node, and is not managed as a J2EE application. If an adapter is used only by a single application, it should be configured as an embedded RAR. If it is to be shared between multiple applications, it should be an external RAR.
When an Enhanced EAR is deployed to WAS, WebSphere can automatically configure the resources specified in the Enhanced EAR. This reduces the number of configuration steps required to set up the WebSphere environment to host the application.
When an Enhanced EAR is uninstalled, the resources that are defined at the application level scope are removed as well. However, resources defined at a scope other than application level are not removed because they might be in use by other applications.
Resources created at Application level scope are limited in visibility to only that application.
New in V6.1: In WAS V6.0, the console did not allow you to view or change Application-scope settings. In V6.1, you can now do this. However, you cannot create new resources at the application scope using the console. To add new application-scoped resources use the Application Server Toolkit or Rational Application Developer.
To view the application scoped resources, select...
Applications | Enterprise Applications | <application | References | Application scoped resourcesIf there are no application scoped resources, you will not see this option.