How to call JMagick from a web application

Question

I have a servlet based application for serving stored documents and images. The images were all stored as jpg with standard sizes based on corporate standards at the time the system was designed. Now, the image sizes that users want to see have changed. Since there are many images that won't need to be resized, we have built a service to resize images on the fly based on an additional request parameter. The new file will then be saved for future requests.

The files can be resized using java, but JMagick resizing often produces a better looking image. The problem with JMagick is that a dll has to be loaded. This works for local testing where there is access to the servers the system path can be changed to add the directory containing the dll.

Is there a way to get the JMagick dll loaded from within the application so that JMagick will work within a Websphere environment? or is there another alternative that will produce a comparable quality image?

Answer 1

The WebSphere "Shared Library" facility allows you to specify the ClassPath to the JARs of a library such as JMagick and a PATH in will any DLLs should be placed.

Shared Libraries can be associated with servers or individual applications.

Search for "managing shared libraries" in the WebSphere Info Center for more inforamtion.