I have a J2EE application that needs updating within a client's intranet

Question

I have a J2EE application that runs fine and is accessible to the internet. Some of our prospective customers would like to use it, but are unwilling to send their data over the internet.

As a workaround I've thought of providing them with the war file and letting them run it themselves.

The problem is: how do I make it trivial for them to update the application when I make a new version available? The more difficult it is, the less likely they are to buy in.

What's involved in writing an updater that fetches the latest war file from online and updates the web application? Is this even possible?

Answer 1

In the least they would need to redeploy the war file. Most application servers have an interface through which you can upload a new war file. I am in favor of doing this process manually i.e. you send them a war file and they can use the app server's admin page to deploy the new war. This way they explicitly know when they are updating the app. Also they control when they want to deploy a new version of the app and easily roll back to an older version.

Answer 2

I would recommend using Jetty as an embedded solution. I have used a few apps that that use the embeded functionality. It allows you to create a packaged distribution of your application that runs a servlet container out of the box.