Packaging and distribution of EJBs - your opinion, please

[Alex Molochnikov]

*** This was first posted in c.l.j.beans, but received no responses ***

Hello everyone,

I am working on an EJB-based commercial product. When done, it will be
deployable on a number of application servers that use different XML
descriptor files, with different content. Initially, these will be JBoss,
WebLogic and Sun ONE AS v8.

I am pondering two different ways of distributing the product:

1. with a wizard-like GUI-based utility that will format the required XML
files based on the user's input, build the EAR file from the preexisting
components + the newly formatted XML files, and deploy the resulting archive
in the server's application directory, or

2. hand over the component JAR and WAR files, with some skeleton XML
descriptors, and tell the user to make their own, server-specific XML files,
then assemble the EAR and deploy it manually.

While the approach (1) is obviously user-friendly, and would be voted for by
the majority of users, I wonder how this is done by other vendors offering
their EJB products. Also, it is entirely possible that I am missing some
other (better? hybrid?) approaches.

Your opinion on this matter is highly appreciated.

Alex Molochnikov
Gestalt Corporation

 

[Big Jim]

Only the standard J2EE descriptors will be looked at by all the servers,
e.g. your weblogic-rdbms-ejb-jar.xml etc. will be ignored by JBoss and
Websphere,
can you not just release with all the descriptors included?

 

[Alex Molochnikov]

Only the standard J2EE descriptors will be looked at by all the servers,
e.g. your weblogic-rdbms-ejb-jar.xml etc. will be ignored by JBoss and
Websphere,
can you not just release with all the descriptors included?

Sure, and this was my plan. The problem, however, is that at least some of
the content of these descriptors must be set at the time of installation.
E.g., the data sources must be described in weblogic-ejb-jar.xml file, and
they can only be known to the admin of a given server site.

So, this thing still boils down to either letting the user manually edit the
descriptors, or attempting to semi-automate the process through a
user-friendly installation wizard. And my original question still stands:
how are the other EJB-based products packaged/delivered?

AM