Automating installation in Websphere Application server

Question

Hi,

I'm using IBM RAD as the IDE and Websphere Application Server v6.0 to deploy applications.

I'm working on a EJB application and build it using ANT and then deploy it using the Admin Console of the server. For every change this deploying is time consuming. 'Run on server' on the EAR file does not work sometimes. Is it possible to automate the installation of the ear file too? When I build the ear file, I should be able to deploy it to the server too from command line or from ant script.

Can you please help me with your suggestions?

Answer 1

First, my usual pattern using RAD is to have a WebSphere Test environment set up and "run with resources in workspace". This is quick, requires no extra build or deploy steps, no routine use of the admin console.

Sometimes one does need to make sure that everything on the server is tidied up - then I remove the projects from the server (in RAD) and also make sure they are stopped and deleted in the admin console.

Second, everything you do in the admin console can be scripted using the command line tool wsadmin. So yes you can deploy your ear files automatically. If you are intending to do that I recommend that you create a new Server profile, do not run it from inside RAD - just to avoid confusion.

I only use stand alone servers for specialised testing, it's clearly more work that the simple save and run made possible when running on a test server with resources in workspace.

If you find the native RAD approach unreliable I suggest you add some mroe questions ... it does work in general.

Answer 2

Agreed, keep the setup simple as possible and create the project from scratch in RAD to make sure it deploys ok.

Bit of a pain as you will then need to maintain a separate ant script but RAD does work well in general.

Karl

Answer 3

It's pretty easy to write a wsadmin script that will update/redeploy your application after you rebuild.

-Rick

Answer 4

Hi,

Try the Rapid Deployment (WRD) and see if that helps you.

Pretty much what you do is drop your EAR into a designated directory that WRD monitors and it takes care of the installation,uninstallation and updates.

The best alternative is to have the build script that does the installation using ws_ant tasks. For a start i would suggest you try this approach too and see if that is useful.

HTH Manglu