EAR File Packaging Got Better With JDeveloper 10.1.3.1

I'll admit it. I've been using Eclipse a lot more lately than JDeveloper. The main reason is that I find I struggle with the project and packaging model JDeveloper uses. For example, if I am building an example of using MBeans for an application, I've struggled to get it all packaged up nicely with JDeveloper in the past.

It could well be my fault by being a bit lazy and not really taking the time to understand the way it works. It just seemed easier to use Eclipse and built exactly what I wanted in Ant.

To cut a long story even remotely short, I just downloaded the new JDeveloper 10.1.3.1 distribution to verify a bug someone had pointed me at relating to defining MBeans in the orion-application.xml file.

As I started to use it, I noticed that it had improved quite a bit in the area of packaging EAR files. Certainly in the way I'd wanted to use it in the past.

One very nice thing is that it's now possible to specify in an EAR deployment-profile where a JAR file should be located within the EAR file. This is particularly helpful with the new JEE5 /lib classloading feature we've added.

For example, lets say you are building an application that consists of a Web application and an MBean. Typically you'd build the MBean as one project, and the Web module as another project.

Then assemble them into an EAR file using the EAR file deployment descriptor.

You may choose to create a specific project just to contain the EAR/application level artifacts such as application.xml -- there's a nice JDeveloper feature (that I think is new) here too where the entries in application.xml are automatically provided based on the J2EE modules selected to be in the application using the Application Assembly dialog page.

The example on the left shows an application called "example" that contains three projects: mbean, webapp and application.

The mbean and webapp projects contains the code and resources that relate to their needs. They both contain their own deployment profile to package the project into its required archive form. The application project is used to assemble the application from the separate projects using an EAR deployment profile.

The EAR deployment profile lets the individual projects within the application to be assembled into the EAR file. The nice discovery I found in the 10.1.3.1. release is that the target directory within the EAR file can be specified now for each project.

Why is this exciting. Does Buttso have no life at all?

Well what I liked about it, is that you can use this new facility to make use of the JEE5 library-directory classloading addition. By specifying that the mbeans-library jar file should be placed within a /lib directory in the EAR file, the MBeans classes are automatically made avaialble to the other modules within the EAR file.

In reality to do this, you must also add an explicit J2EE deployment descriptor application.xml file inside of your EAR file instead of relying on the implicit application.xml file JDeveloper inserts into the EAR file.

Add a J2EE deployment descriptor application.xml file to the application project and either set the version to be "5" or if you leave it as a 1.4 version, insert the /lib tags into the file.

It's only a little feature for sure, but its certainly something that makes me more productive in JDeveloper than before. I'm hoping to discover a few other little things like this as I start to use it a little more often now.