Hardware

http://radio.weblogs.com/0118231/stories/2003/08/08/installingTheBc4jToyStoreOnApacheTomcat4124.html

Thanks for the link... I followed the link but still was not able to get the war file to install and run properly.

Any other suggestions?

Did you install the ADF Runtime libraries on the Tomcat server?
Are you getting any specific error message?

Shay,
All I did was try to create a war file and upload that war file on the tomcat server. I did not personally install any ADF libraries.

Is there a step by step tutorial anywhere that explains how to deploy a ADF Business Component app to a Tomcat server that I can use? Something that explains how to prepare the Tomcat server, package the app and installation....

Yes there is - it's in the JDeveloper Online help :-)
http://helponline.oracle.com/jdeveloper/help/state/content/destination.2%7E9%7E1%7E/navSetId.jdeveloper/oldNavId.0/navId.0/oldNavSetId.jdeveloper/

But basically the point is that you need to run the tools->Install ADF Runtim option to get the right JARs onto your server, and then do a regular WAR or EAR deployment.

But what if the server I'm installing to is remote? I'm doing this for a customer and I do not have public internet access to the Tomcat server. I'm trying to create something that I can FTP to the customer and then move the required files to the Tomcat server for installation.

I'm not sure it will work, but you can try and include the ADF libraries in your EAR file.
There is more information about these libraries here:
http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/jdev/howtos/10g/adf_runtime_update_howto.html

Has anyone heard of success in this regard -- that is, successfully deploying an ADF application where the EAR contained all the necessary ADF libraries jars? If so, on what application server and packaging which jars?

I think there is a growing need to deploy enterprise applications that are completely self-contained to limit shared library conflicts. It would be great if someone could comment on the feasibility of doing this with an ADF app. I've heard twice now, once from Steve Meunch and now from you Shay, that it should be possible. Can you guys explore this some more?

Thanks,
Jeff

I would be also interested in this. But i assume that having all BC4J runtime libs in the web-inf/jar would stop the BC4J Adminstrator application from work.

Also i wonder how to configure the application, e.g. the database server name, BC4J pooling parameters, config in bc4j.xcfg when this is contained in the WAR or EAR file.

Having all the jars in each WAR would blow up the files alot (and the memory needed if multiple BC4J Applications are deployed in same Appserver), but could reduce the problems mentioned 301454

Rgds, Markus

So anyone know how to get an application like this installed on a server that is not local to the Jdeveloper that created it?

install Tomcat locally on your computer and run the ADF Runtime installer on it. When it runs view the log in Jdev showing what it copied to the tomcat directories. You will find that most things went to <tomcat_install>\common\lib

copy all the files to the same location on the remote host.

If you install the jars in common\lib then they will be available to all applications on the server which may be of benefit for future development.

as a side note, having a local Tomcat instance is definately worthwhile.

couple of other things:
Do you have access to the Tomcat Manager app? I have found that you cannot undeploy the app if it has been run because some of the files are in use by the container. The only reliable way to deploy is to:
1. Stop Tomcat
2. delete the WAR and the directory created by Tomcat (by tomcat autodeploy)
3. Copy your war file to the webapp folder
4 Start Tomcat

check the tomcat server logs for any deployment errors/exceptions

What I'm looking for is not information on how to configure an application server's shared libraries to include the ADF libraries but rather how to configure and package an application to include these libraries. The impetus for this is that I don't want my application to be dependent on the version(s) of shared libraries. This would limit the impact on existing deployed applications and generally maintain nicely encapsulated apps, in theory. Please correct me if I'm wrong about any of this. Any impact of this configuration on the server's physical resources can't be evaluated and weighed against the benefit on a case by case basis.

Could any Oracle rep please comment on this?

Thanks,
Jeff

"Since an ADF application is just a J2EE EAR file, you can also choose to deploy all of the ADF libraries along with your application, too. In that case, you wouldn't need any kind of global ADF installation on the appserver."
- Steve Muench, from http://radio.weblogs.com/0118231/2004/02/27.html#a243

Can anyone (Steve?) please offer insight into this statement? I'm deploying to AS 10g with older versions of BC4J/ADF libraries that support existing, deployed applications. I've tried packaging all of the libraries listed here: http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/jdev/howtos/10g/adf_runtime_update_howto.html into the EAR but I keep running into problems. If I don't include oc4jclient.jar, for example, then I get a java.lang.IncompatibleClassChangeError because the older, shared libraries deployed to the AS are conflicting with the compiled dependency in my application. If I do include oc4jclient.jar then I run into a different exception.

So, how exactly can an ADF application be packaged such that it is fully independent and doesn't have bad interactions with older version of ADF libaries that are already in the shared libraries area of the target application server?

- Jeff

IMHO, if you already have some BC4J/ADF libraries in the shared libraries of the app server, they would have precedence on the libraries of your EAR.
So, on a same Oracle AS instance, you would never be able to run at the same time an app developed with 9.0.4 and another one developed in 10.1.2.
For other types of AS, where BC4J/ADF is not by default in the shared libraries, you may choose not to install ADF and deploy it inside the app itself, it should work.
For a WAR, you may use <web-app-class-loader> option, but I don't think it would work for EAR's.

HTH,
Adrian

I'm sorry. To be more precise, my plan is exactly as you say: to package the ADF libraries inside of the WAR file and set the web-app-class-loader search-local-classes-first to true in the orion-web.xml file. I would then package the WAR into an EAR. When I spoke of EARs, I was speaking in the general sense of a J2EE application deployment package. I will be more specific in the future.

Thanks for the feedback and please keep it coming.

- Jeff

I've started a new thread to discuss this issue. Please see:

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