Assemble your application

After you develop an application assemble it before you can deploy it in your application server. To assemble your application, you can use the Application Assembly Tool (AAT), which is provided with WAS, or any integrated development environment (IDE) that supports J2EE application development, such as IBM WebSphere Studio Application Developer (WSAD). For information on available development tools, see Development tools.

The process of assembling an application consists of these steps:

1. Select the files that you want include in the application. An application can consist of any of these objects, provided they are compliant with the J2EE 1.3 specification:

   • Enterprise beans
   • Servlets, JavaServer Pages (JSP) files and other Web components
   • Resource adapter (connector) implementations
   • Application clients
   • Other supporting classes and files

2. Create a deployment descriptor. A deployment descriptor is an XML file that contains instructions on how to deploy the module on the application server. The AAT includes a feature that generates the deployment descriptor for you.

3. Package the application files into a single enterprise archive (EAR) file, or application module, which contains the deployment descriptor and one or more application files or archives. You can include any of these archives in the EAR file:

   • Web application archives (WAR)
   • Resource adapter archives (RAR)
   • Enterprise beans (EJB JAR)
   • Application client archives (JAR)

After you assemble the modules into an EAR file, you are ready to deploy the EAR file in your application server. For information on deployment, see Deploy your application.

Assemble applications with the AAT
The Application Assembly Tool (AAT) is provided with WAS. This topic describes how to use the AAT to assemble enterprise applications.