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The target audience for this guide is the Application Provider and Assembler, i.e. the person in charge of combining one or more components (ejb-jars and/or wars) to create a Java EE application. It describes how the Java EE components should be packaged to create a Java EE application.
The application programmer is responsible for providing the deployment descriptor associated with the developed application (Enterprise ARchive). The Application Assembler's responsibilities is to provide a XML deployment descriptor that conforms to the deployment descriptor's XML schema as defined in the Java EE specification version 5. (Refer to http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/application_5.xsd ).
To deploy Java EE applications on the application server, all
information is contained in one XML deployment descriptor. The file name
for the application XML deployment descriptor is
application.xml and it must be located in the top level
META-INF directory.
Some Java EE application examples are provided in the JOnAS distribution:
The standard deployment descriptor should contain structural information that includes the following:
There is no JOnAS-specific deployment descriptor for the Enterprise ARchive.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<application
xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee
http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/application_5.xsd"
version="5">
<description>Java EE 5.0 EAR Sample</description>
<display-name>Java EE 5.0 EAR Sample</display-name>
<!-- EJB Modules -->
<module>
<ejb>ejb3.jar</ejb>
</module>
<!-- Web Modules -->
<module>
<web>
<web-uri>javaee5-earsample.war</web-uri>
<context-root>javaee5-earsample</context-root>
</web>
</module>
<!-- Application Client Modules -->
<module>
<!-- Application Client using JMS to interact with the application -->
<java>jms-application-client.jar</java>
</module>
<module>
<!-- Not secured Application Client (only access read-only beans) -->
<java>not-secured-application-client.jar</java>
</module>
<module>
<!-- Secured Application Client (can access all bean under a SecurityContext) -->
<java>jaas-secured-application-client.jar</java>
</module>
</application>
Java EE applications are packaged for deployment in a standard Java programming language Archive file called an ear file (Enterprise ARchive). This file can contain the following:
META-INF/application.xml
in the ear file.
An EAR being a standard Java archive, it also has a MANIFEST file.
An interesting attribute to add to this file is the EAR's implementation version: indeed, if this information is present and the versioning service is active, you can do smooth application version migration:
Manifest-Version: 1.0
Implementation-Version: 2.1.0
Before building an ear file for a Java EE application, the ejb-jars and the wars that will be packaged in the Java EE application must be built and the XML deployment descriptor (application.xml) must be written.
Then, the ear file (<java-ee-application>.ear)
can be built using the jar command:
cd <java-ee_application_directory>
jar cvfm <java-ee-application>.ear META-INF/MANIFEST.MF *
Note that in order to include your custom MANIFEST file, you need
to specify its path to the jar command:
cd <java-ee_application_directory>
jar cvfm <java-ee-application>.ear META-INF/MANIFEST.MF *
If the Java EE application's components are available as Apache Maven dependencies, you can also use the maven-ear-plugin for the EAR generation. In this case, the generation and inclusion of all files is done automatically by Maven.
Here's an example pom.xml file generating a EAR with the Implementation Version:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project
xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0
http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
<parent>
<groupId>org.ow2.jonas.samples</groupId>
<artifactId>ear-sample</artifactId>
<version>1.0.0</version>
</parent>
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<artifactId>${parent.artifactId}-ear</artifactId>
<packaging>ear</packaging>
<name>JOnAS Java EE 5 sample</name>
<description>This is a sample Java EE 5 application.</description>
<dependencies>
<!-- WARs and EJB-JARs -->
<dependency>
<groupId>${project.groupId}</groupId>
<artifactId>${parent.artifactId}-ejb</artifactId>
<version>${project.version}</version>
<type>ejb</type>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>${project.groupId}</groupId>
<artifactId>${parent.artifactId}-war</artifactId>
<version>${project.version}</version>
<type>war</type>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<artifactId>maven-ear-plugin</artifactId>
<configuration>
<!-- Make sure it is a Java EE 5 EAR -->
<version>5</version>
<!-- Here, we can rename the included files' names -->
<modules>
<webModule>
<groupId>${project.groupId}</groupId>
<artifactId>
${parent.artifactId}-war
</artifactId>
<contextRoot>
/${parent.artifactId}
</contextRoot>
<bundleFileName>
${parent.artifactId}.war
</bundleFileName>
</webModule>
<ejbModule>
<groupId>${project.groupId}</groupId>
<artifactId>
${parent.artifactId}-ejb
</artifactId>
<bundleFileName>
${parent.artifactId}.jar
</bundleFileName>
</ejbModule>
</modules>
<archive>
<!-- Don't forget the Implementation Version -->
<manifestEntries>
<Implementation-Version>${project.version}</Implementation-Version>
</manifestEntries>
</archive>
</configuration>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
</project>