[Xdoclet-user] EJB Deployment descriptor configuration

[Wim Lambrecht]

Hi there,   This is actually a ‘configuration’ issue.   i have the following situation: I want to assemble an J2EE application (ear) which consist of 2 EJB-JARS. One of de EJB-JARS contains ‘common’ stuff (let’s say, like user-management, authentication, authorisation) and is an artifact created via a seperate maven project (so, is independant of my project). Let’s call this one the COMMON-EJB.jar. Its contains all the usual stuff, including the corresponding deployment descriptor “DD” (which is the configurable part).   Now, this COMMON-EJB.jar is used in my current project and will be packaged in the final production EAR. But, and this is the issue, i want to re-configure the deployment descriptor (in my application context) just before the EAR-packaging. I know that, if done manually, this is no problem, but i’m looking for an automated way. Manually i should take the COMMON-EJB.jar, unjars it, change the DD to my wishes, jar it again, and then use it in my EAR. ‘Automated’ is something like:  the desired changes for the DD are described somewhere, and some script (plugin, pregoal, whatever) applies those changes to the original DD (by the way, DD doesn’t support inheritance, like the properties-cascade in Maven does). Which is then used in the production EAR. Of course, the latter, involves some unjar/rejar too, but it should be ideal that configuration takes place in an automated manner IN the current project. So, in the end (in my project built), type ‘maven’ in the command line, and that’s it.   Any ideas, feelings, ...?   t i a -wil-   P.S. 1. the EJB-jars in the common and in my project are built with the maven xdoclet plugin. No problem in that matter. 2. what re-configurations do i have in mind ? Well: change transaction-types on bean-methods ; add resourcerefs - like DataSources – on enterprise beans, ... the usual stuff a deployer does, ... The session-bean <> entity bean relations (ejbrefs) for instance can remain xdoclet-generated IMHO. but here i don’t want to (xdoclet)generate the common beans things again, they should still be provided as a EJBJAR generated in that other project earlier). 3. in fact, i guess this is a common issue, no ? Not only EJB Deployment Descriptors, but all configurable things linked to (packaged inside) a deliverable (properties-files, EAR DD’s, WAR web-inf, etc.), will sooner or later in de deploy-proces needs some re-configuration. But it should be nice that this configurations   be applied automatically.