Configuring application and server resources
In WebSphere Application Server v7.0, application-related properties and data sources can be defined within an Enhanced EAR file to simplify application deployment as shown in Figure | 2-13. The properties are used by the application after it is deployed.
Figure 22-13 Enhanced EAR
The enhanced EAR tooling is available in the WebSphere Application Server Deployment Editor, as shown in Figure | 2-14. Deployment information is saved under the application /META-INF/ibmconfig directory.
|
Note: The Enhanced EAR editor is used to edit several WebSphere Application Server v7.0 specific configurations, such as data sources, class loader policies, substitution variables, shared libraries, virtual hosts, and authentication settings. It lets you configure these settings with little effort and allows them to be published every time you publish the application. The benefit of this is that it makes the testing process simpler and easily repeatable, because the configurations are saved to files that are usually shared in the team repository. Thus, even though it will not let you configure all the runtime settings, it is a good tool for development purposes because it eases the process of configuring the most common settings. The downside is that the configuration settings are stored in the EAR file, and are not visible from administrative console. The console is only able to edit settings that belong to the cluster, node, and server contexts. When you change a configuration using the Enhanced EAR editor, this change is made at the application context. Furthermore, in most cases these settings are dependent on the node where the application server will be installed in anyway, so it makes little sense to configure them at the application context for deployment purposes. |
Figure 22-14 Enterprise application deployment descriptor: Enhanced EAR
The server configuration data that you specify in this editor gets embedded within the application itself. This improves the administration process of publishing to WebSphere Application Server v7.0 when installing a new application to an existing local or remote WebSphere Server by preserving the existing server configuration.
The following resource types can be added to the enhanced EAR:
| 
|
| JDBC resources (Data Sources section) |
|
|
|
| Resource adapters (Embedded J2C Options section) |
|
|
|
| Application class loader settings (Application section) |
|
|
|
| Substitution variables |
|
|
|
| JAAS authentication entries |
|
|
|
| Shared libraries |
|
|
|
| Virtual hosts |
|
ibm.com/redbooks |