When deploying an EAR into WebSphere, what's the cause of a "duplicate entry" SaveFailureException?

Question

When attempting to install the EAR, the following exception results:

Caught Exception installing ApplicationName  
com.ibm.ws.scripting.ScriptingException: com.ibm.websphere.management.application.client.AppDeploymentException: AppDeploymentException: []  
org.eclipse.jst.j2ee.commonarchivecore.internal.exception.SaveFailureException: META-INF/application.xml  
META-INF/application.xml  
duplicate entry: META-INF/application.xml  
org.eclipse.jst.j2ee.commonarchivecore.internal.exception.SaveFailureException: org.eclipse.jst.j2ee.commonarchivecore.internal.exception.SaveFailureException: META-INF/application.xml  

Needless to say, the EAR file does not have two application.xml files within it, so I can't explain the "duplicate entry" error. Is this exception familiar to anyone? How is it resolved?

Answer 1

Check if there is another application with the same name already deployed onto that server.

Answer 2

Another option is that you have another JAR file, located inside the EAR's root, that has a META-INF/application.xml in it.

Sounds bizarre? I know, but I've seen this happen before (developers included EAR files within EAR files).