RE: EJB Basics

[Kevin Duffey]

Hmm..something I think I can answer..at least to some degree.   WEB-INF is a dir usually below each Web Apps WWW dir. WEB-INF is where you would place your compiled classes (WEB-INF/classes) and any 3rd party libraries you would use (WEB-INF/lib). You also have a Servlet 2.2 standard web-app descriptor, called web.xml. This is where you map servlets, set up welcome files, and so on. The .WAR file type is really nothing more than a www dir jarred up (.jar) but with a .war extension. It includes the www folder, and the WEB-INF folder below it, with the compiled classes of the servlets/javabeans/core classes, and 3rd party libraries. You can deploy a single .war file into any J2EE app server that properly implements the spec. Actually, it can be deployed into any Servlet 2.2 container. ServletExec and Resin are two engines that are not J2EE app servers, but do manage Servlet 2.2/JSP 1.1.   META-INF is, as far as I know, where a J2EE standard application.xml descriptor goes, and is part of the .EAR file format, which can include many web-apps (many www with WEB-INF dirs below each), as well as EJBs. A single EAR is considered an application in itself, probably because you can deploy EJBs into any J2EE app server using an EAR (if that app server supports EARs). I don't know the full gist of EAR but I do know Orion supports it, including hot-swap (at least I think it supports hot-swap) of EAR applications. I am not sure of the full benefit of EAR over WAR, other than that you can contain many WAR files in a single EAR, as well as any number of EJB's. EAR stands for Enterprise Application aRchive, whereas WAR stands for Web Applicat aRchive.   Hope that sheds a little light on the topic.   -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Mark A. Richman Sent: Tuesday, November 14, 2000 10:01 AM To: Orion-Interest Subject: EJB Basics What is the difference between WEB-INF and META-INF?  How do these directory structures relate to jar, ear, and war files?  Which of these is J2EE, and which is Orion-specific?  Maybe I am confusing something with Tomcat...   - Mark