Packaging and Deployment advice

[awhitford]

(I recognize that this question isn't exactly limited to Seam, but I'm asking the audience anyway...)

I have a Seam application that follows Domain Driven Design principles.  It is built using Maven, and so is a multi-project.  One module represents the JPA/Hibernate Entities and Services.  Another module represents the presentation layer, or a user-interface to manage the domain model.  Another module represents the integration layer -- a web service layer for enterprise application integration.

What is the best practice for packaging and deployment?  The presentation layer yields a war that is bundled with the ejb jar as an ear, then the ear is deployed.  Since the web service layer leverages the exact same ejb jar, should the web service layer be bundled with the UI, or separate?  (Why or why not?  Can someone point to an example?)

Thanks for your help.

[jamesl]

Anthony,

For me the packaging would take a shape that supports the goals of deployment and version/change impact. For example, a single EAR is easier to deploy, download and distribute.

The only time I would unbundle the EAR is because one layer was changing at a different rate to the other and therefore they needed to be deployed separately. For example, the back-end services are stable but the UI keeps changing.

Of course, if you have a presentation tier that doesn't support EAR deployments, then the choice is pretty clear.