Deploying Applications Using Enterprise Manager Oracle Application Server Tips by Burleson Consulting

As already discussed, components are packaged into archives for deployment onto the application server. However, a number of files must be updated before the application server can provide support for a component. Web components are packaged into WAR files that contain all the files needed to support that component. These may include HTML pages, Java Server Pages, servlets, or image files. Enterprise JavaBeans are packaged into JAR files with all their supporting class files. When deploying groups of packages together, they are placed in an EAR (Enterprise Archive) that contains all of the JAR, WAR, and other files needed for that package. An entire application can be packaged into one EAR archive that is deployed to the application server.

Deploying an application to Oracle Application Server 10g requires that a number of support files be updated. For this reason Oracle recommends that you use Oracle Enterprise Manager to deploy your application. Alternately, your developers can deploy components to the application server directly from JDeveloper. You can also deploy your application using the Java admin.jar tool. And finally, you can manually deploy your application and modify the appropriate files, but this is not recommended. Because this book focuses on administration of the Application Server and not on J2EE development, we are not going to discuss the mechanics of packaging a component for deployment. You should receive the application properly packaged from the developers.

Since you have Enterprise Manager (if you are running Application Server 10g), we will discuss using EM to deploy an application. For the purpose of this exercise, we are going to deploy an EAR file from the administrator?s computer (running the browser) to the application server using Enterprise Manager. The file we are going to deploy is called petstore.ear, and it was sent to us by the developer ready to deploy. The application is going to be deployed into the OC4J container called OC4J_Demos, which was created when we installed the Application Server. Once you start Enterprise Manager, navigate to the instance where the application will be deployed. If EM is not running, you need to start it.

ORACLE_HOME/bin/emctl start em

Figure 4: Enterprise Manager instance status page

At the top of the status page shown in Figure 6-4, is a link to J2EE Applications. Selecting this link will display a list of current applications installed on all OC4J instances, as shown in Figure 6-5.

Figure 5: Enterprise Manager J2EE Applications page

Return to the instance status page. For this exercise, we are going to use the OC4J_Demos container. Selecting the OC4J_Demos link displays the OC4J Status page, where you can configure, start, or stop the OC4J container (covered in the next chapter). It also lists the current EAR files deployed inside this container. In Figure 6-6, Enterprise Manager lists two deployed EAR files: FAQApp and transtrace. To deploy the petstore.ear file, select the Deploy Ear File button located in the Applications section.

Figure 6: Enterprise Manager?s OC4J Status page

The Deploy Application Wizard starts by requesting the location of the EAR file and the application?s name. Using the Browse button, locate the petstore.ear file. The application name is petstore. Since this is a new application, it does not have a parent, so leave the Parent Application combo box set to Default. Select the Continue button.

Figure 7: Enterprise Manager?s Deploy Application Wizard

The web component (PetStoreWAR) contained in the petstore.ear file must be mapped to a URL so that browsers can access it from OHS. Enter the URL beginning with a /, such as /petstore. This will map the application to http://<host>:<port>/petstore as shown in Figure 6-8.

Figure 8: Enterprise Manager?s Deploy Application: URL Mapping

Select the Next button to continue to the Resource Reference Mappings page, shown in Figure 6-9. Here you map a resource reference to an entity such as a data source. To map to a resource, you must have already deployed that resource to the container. Selecting Next again will take you to the Review page, shown in Figure 6-10. Selecting the Deploy button will begin the process of deploying the EAR file to the container (Figure 6-11).

Figure 9: Enterprise Manager?s Deploy Application: Resource Reference Mappings page

Figure 10: Enterprise Manager?s Deploy Application: Review page

Figure 11: Enterprise Manager?s Deploy Application: Deploy page

Depending on the size of the application being deployed, the actual deployment process can take quite a while. If the EAR file contains web components (as this one does), the wizard will automatically restart OHS after completing the deployment. Once completed, Enterprise Manager will display the Confirmation page (Figure 6-12).

Figure 12: Enterprise Manager?s Deploy Application Wizard Confirmation page

Selecting the OK button will return you to the OC4J Status page, displaying the new petstore application in the application section (Figure 6-13). If this new application is dependent on other components, they must also be deployed in order for petstore to function.

Figure 13: Enterprise Manager?s OC4J Status page with our example file deployed

This is an excerpt from "Oracle 10g Application Server Administration Handbook" by Don Burleson and John Garmany.