I am using OC4J (version 10.1.3.4 standalone) with Eclipse 3.5 i.e. Galileo for
development and testing a J2EE Enterprise Application (EAR file) that contains
an EJB and A client application that I'm working on. On a first run, I am able
to build all the components and deploy it fine but if I make a change to any of
the components e.g. make change to component the EJB and try to redeploy the
EAR file, I get the following
error:
C:\EclipseGalileo\eclipse\plugins\org.eclipse.jst.server.generic.oc4j_1.5.205.v200805140145\buildfiles\oracle.10.1.3.xml:97:
Deploy error: Operation failed with error:
Unable to find/read file
META-INF/application.xml in
C:\product\OC4J_Standalone\j2ee\home\applications\BankEJB3.0EAR
(META-INF/application.xml)
The only way that I can get the EAR to
redeploy sucessfully is to make a change in all the components i.e. the Client
App and the EJB, and then build it all again repackage into a new EAR file and
then redeploy. It seems to me that Eclipse will only build, package and deploy
components that have changed since the last build into a new EAR file and
exclude the other components(in this case the clientpplication) that have not
changed from the new EAR file. Hence the newly packaged EAR will contain only
the EJB. Since OC4J deletes the and recreates the folder containing the
application during redeployment i.e
(OC4J_HOME\applications\<APP_NAME_FOLDER>), it essentially tries to
redeploy part of EAR (i.e EAR containg only components that have changed since
last deployment) and I think this is what causes the failure. After a few days
spent trying to figure out what was wrong, I've finally found the culprit and it
is to do with the publish process in eclipse (i.e. clicking on the publish
button in eclipse server view). Essesntially, what happens when when you publish
is , Eclipse jars up the updated component and places it in TEMP_FOLDERi.e.
<ECLIPSE_WORKSPACE>\.metadata\.plugins\org.eclipse.wst.server.core\tmp0\<ARCHIVE_NAME>.
Then using the build file found @
<ECLIPSE_HOME>\plugins\org.eclipse.jst.server.generic.oc4j_1.5.205.v200805140145\buildfiles\oracle.10.1.3.xml,
eclipse creates an a archive (EAR) containg only the updated component(EJB)
i.e.(components in the TEMP_FOLDER) and excludes all of the components that have
not been updated (in this case the appclient) and tries to deploy this new
"partial" Archive.
The deployment descriptor (application.xml) of this new
"partial" archive will still however, have a reference to the compnonent which
has not changed although that is not part of this new archive (i.e new Archive
contains only the updated components). Oc4J then tries to deploy the new
archive. However, during deployment, oc4j undeploys the older application(which
contains all components) and tries to deploy teh new archive(which contains only
the updated components). The redeployment fails because of the references(in
application.xml) to the components that that are not part of the new
archive.
I'm wondering if this is the expected behaviour and whether it will ever
be fixed? Or is there a certain specifics steps to set up EAR projects for
deployment to OC4J?
Any answers to these questions will be greatly
appreciated
