2 Replies Latest reply on Nov 24, 2008 3:04 AM by ptemmerman

Confusion between JBossweb.deployer and JBossweb.sar

ptemmerman Nov 21, 2008 4:34 AM

Hi all,

I already have some basic knowledge of Tomcat and JBoss, but now I want to really get started with it. So I bought this new book JBoss in Action, which focuses on JBoss 5. I'm already a few chapters far and realized that some things aren't completed clear to me. I thought it would be advisable to get a better understanding, before continuing to read.

The main confusion I got is related to deployers.
As far as I understood from the book, the deployers located in server/deployers are responsible for what else than deploying applications.
Now, there is this jbossweb.deployer, which isn't completely clear to me.

Is this deployer only used to be able to deploy jbossweb.sar?
The configuration files located in that deployer, are they used to configure Tomcat? Or is it rather to configure whatever web application?

I'm confused by the fact that I find configuration XMLs in both jbossweb.deployer and jbossweb.sar (in /deploy/). The book isn't really getting deeper into the purpose of those files. So I'm not sure what is configured where, and above all, why it should be "there" (as in location), and not "there".

The thing is that in JBoss 4.2 this is completely different. In JBoss 4.2 there is no jbossweb.sar, everything is configured under jbossweb.deployer.

I'm hoping someone could give me a few hints as to what this is all about.
Or if you could point me to a chapter in some documentation, or an article explaining this, I would greatly appreciate.

Thanks in advance.

1. Re: Confusion between JBossweb.deployer and JBossweb.sar

peterj Nov 21, 2008 11:51 AM (in response to ptemmerman)

One of the issues is that the online version of the book is based on Beta3 or Beta4 (it's been a while so I can't remember exactly which), and things have moved since then. (In fact, things are continuing to move with config setting and files playing an elaborate game of musical chairs).

The job of the *.deployer entries in the deployer directory is to deploy applications of their respective types. For example, the jbossweb.deployer is responsible for deploying WAR files. On the other hand, the jbossweb.sar in the deploy directory is a service that contains the embedded JBoss Web Server (based on Tomcat), which is the servlet container for JBossAS. Configuration settings related specifically to running of JBoss Web Server (ex: server.xml) are located in jbossweb.sar, while configuration settings related to deployment of WAR files (ex: the global web.xml) are located in jbossweb.deployer.

In earlier versions of 5.0, such as Beta4, all of the above files were located in deployers/jbossweb.deployer. The new locations seems to make better sense.
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2. Re: Confusion between JBossweb.deployer and JBossweb.sar

ptemmerman Nov 24, 2008 3:04 AM (in response to ptemmerman)

Hi Peter,

Thanks for your reply.
It's already a bit clearer to me.
Although I'm not sure whether these new locations make better sense. As you said, the JBoss Web service is used to serve servlets and the jbossweb.deployer is used to deploy .war files. Now, the best way of deploying servlets is by using war files. And this is where things get confusing with the current file layout.
Although, it might just be me as well :-) Maybe after I finish the book, this isn't a point for me anymore.

Congrats on the book by the way. As for now I like it.
Although, if I can give hint for the next revision. I think it would be a good idea to backup the nice explanation of how JBoss works with some exercises. Maybe having some todos at the end of each chapter will help to actually force you to apply what you just have read.
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