Professional Oracle® WebLogic Server

Chapter 5. Packaging and Deploying WebLogic Web Applications

This chapter discusses the steps required to package and deploy a WebLogic Server web application. Consistent with the intermediate to advanced nature of this book, we assume that you have some knowledge of the Java EE specification and the required elements in a well-structured web application. Our emphasis will be on the techniques applicable to a WebLogic Server deployment rather than a generic Java EE environment. We also assume a basic level of experience with the Ant build tool provided by the Apache Software Foundation. See the Ant home page at http://jakarta.apache.org/ant for online documentation.

Figure 5-1 presents the basic process for packaging and deploying a web application using WebLogic Server. The basic steps in the process are as follows:

1. Create web.xml and weblogic.xml descriptor files.

2. Organize the web application components in the proper directory structure.

3. Precompile JSP pages and place the generated class files in the web application structure.

4. Deploy the application to WebLogic Server as an exploded or archived web application.

The rest of this chapter discusses each of the steps in this process and the tools available in WebLogic Server to perform each activity.

Packaging Web Applications

You package web applications for deployment in WebLogic Server by creating the correct web application directory structure and placing in that structure the view components, images, class libraries, and descriptor files ...