| <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> |
| <!DOCTYPE html |
| PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> |
| <html lang="en-us" xml:lang="en-us"> |
| <head> |
| <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /> |
| <!-- /******************************************************************************* |
| * Copyright (c) 2000, 2005 IBM Corporation and others. |
| * All rights reserved. This program and the accompanying materials |
| * are made available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License v1.0 |
| * which accompanies this distribution, and is available at |
| * http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html |
| * |
| * Contributors: |
| * IBM Corporation - initial API and implementation |
| *******************************************************************************/ --> |
| <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../org.eclipse.wst.doc.user/common.css" /> |
| <title>Enterprise application projects</title> |
| </head> |
| <body id="cjearproj"><a name="cjearproj"><!-- --></a> |
| |
| <h1 class="topictitle1">Enterprise application projects</h1> |
| <div><p>An enterprise application project contains the hierarchy of resources |
| that are required to deploy a J2EE enterprise application, often referred |
| to as an EAR file.</p> |
| <p>An enterprise application project also contains a set of references to |
| other J2EE modules and Java™ projects that are combined to compose |
| an EAR file. These projects can be Web modules, EJB modules, application client |
| modules, connector modules, general utility Java JAR files, and EJB client JAR files. |
| Enterprise application projects created in the workbench include a deployment |
| descriptor, as well as files that are common to all J2EE modules that are |
| defined in the deployment descriptor.</p> |
| <p>When a J2EE module project is created, it can be associated with an enterprise |
| application project. The project wizards aid this by allowing you to specify |
| a new or existing enterprise application project. Enterprise application projects |
| are exported as EAR (enterprise archive) files that include all files defined |
| in the Enterprise Application project as well as the appropriate archive file |
| for each J2EE module or utility JAR project defined in the deployment descriptor, |
| such as Web archive (WAR) files and EJB JAR files.</p> |
| <p>An enterprise application can contain utility JAR files that are to be |
| used by the contained modules. This allows sharing of code at the application |
| level by multiple Web, EJB, or application client modules. These JAR files |
| are commonly referred to as <em>utility JAR files.</em> The utility JAR files |
| defined for an enterprise application project can be actual JAR files in the |
| project, or you can include utility Java projects that are designated to become |
| the utility JAR files during assembly and deployment.</p> |
| <p>To start developing J2EE applications, you typically first create an enterprise |
| application project to contain your Web, EJB, and application client modules. |
| The enterprise application project is used to compose an entire application |
| from the various modules. Since no source code is built directly into an enterprise |
| application, these projects are not Java projects, and are not compiled by the Java builder.</p> |
| <div class="p">When you create an enterprise application project using the workbench, |
| the following key files are automatically created:<dl><dt class="dlterm">META-INF/application.xml</dt> |
| <dd>This file is the deployment descriptor for the enterprise application, |
| as defined in the J2EE specification, that is responsible for associating |
| J2EE modules to a specific EAR file. It is created in the <span class="uicontrol">META-INF</span> folder.</dd> |
| <dt class="dlterm">META-INF/.modulemaps</dt> |
| <dd>This file contains the mappings to the contained modules and utility JAR |
| projects.</dd> |
| </dl> |
| </div> |
| <div class="p">The following workbench artifacts are also created in an enterprise application |
| project but will not become part of the EAR file, and you should not edit |
| them manually:<dl><dt class="dlterm">.j2ee</dt> |
| <dd>This is a workbench artifact that includes the product version and J2EE |
| specification level for the project.</dd> |
| <dt class="dlterm">.project</dt> |
| <dd>This is a workbench artifact, the standard project description |
| file.</dd> |
| <dt class="dlterm">.runtime</dt> |
| <dd>This is a workbench artifact that contains the target server definition.</dd> |
| </dl> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| <div><div class="relconcepts"><strong>Related concepts</strong><br /> |
| <div><a href="../topics/cjarch.html" title="The Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) provides a standard for developing multitier, enterprise services.">J2EE architecture</a></div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="reltasks"><strong>Related tasks</strong><br /> |
| <div><a href="../topics/tjear.html">Creating an enterprise application project</a></div> |
| <div><a href="../topics/tjexpear.html" title="Enterprise applications are deployed in the form of an EAR file. Use the Export wizard to export an enterprise application project into an EAR file for deployment.">Exporting an enterprise application into an EAR file</a></div> |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| </body> |
| </html> |
