Hello,
I would like to know, what is the best way to deploy customer extensions to a J2EE application (which is deployed as an .ear file) .
I am using a configurable dynamic class loading to allow product customization (usually implementations of interfaces).
I know some possible solutions, but...
1. solution: the customer provides its product extensions as a jar file which is then located in the classpath of the J2EE server.
But I dislike this solution, beause it requires a server restart if the customer extensions are redeployed and further on, depending on the customer company's security restricition, no access to the J2EE server's CLASSPATH might be granted.
2. solution: the customer opens the .ear file of our product, adds its extension.jar to it and the extension.jar has to have a predefined name. By that we can make sure, that the classloader finds this jar (because it can be referenced in the classpath of the manifest.mf of the ejb.jar, it will do no harm, if it does not exist).
What do you think about this?
Are there other possible solutions?
Best regards from sunny Black Forest, Germany,
Mattin
