Java EE 8 Design Patterns and Best Practices

When to use the deployment descriptor, annotation, or programmatic configuration

To specify and configure the authentication mechanism, we can either use the deployment descriptor file, use annotation, or programmatically define the configuration. Generally, we choose annotation because it is easy to use in Java EE projects. However, sometimes it easier and more interesting to use deployment descriptors or programmatic configuration. If this is the case, what are the appropriate scenarios in which to use each? 

When we use a deployment descriptor, we define a file of configurations and create a configuration to a set of resources. This makes it possible to create a single location to configure our security policies and associate it with a ...