1. Are you saying that by using the manifest, I will not be able to load the classes and jars from WEB-INF ?
No. What I�m saying is that I�ve never tried anything like this before and therefore I don�t know whether it works or not. My guess is that it should work if you provide the correct path, but again I�m not sure. What I�m sure though is that using a common library will definitely work since I�m doing this every day. The uncertainty though is even higher because you use a technology (I mean the container here) that could implement the class loading in a very independent manner
ant it might not work whatsoever. So try for a while using the manifest and if it doesn�t work you might consider taking another approach.
2. If so, where in my directory structure would I place the common jars and how would my manifest help in loading them?
You can place the common.jar library in the root like any other war or jar you have. In all your manifest files (from war to jar) add a line like this
Class-Path: iText.jar commons-collections.jar xalan.jar commons-lang.j
ar common.jar Facade_EJB.jar (this is an extras from one of our war/jar).
3. Does the manifest have to reside in a actual jar file or can in reside in the META-INF folder of the exploded Ejb jar folder?
This I believe, depends whether you use an archive to deploy your application, or you deploy it in the exploded format (which you use only for development I hope). In that case it is as intuitive as you might expect: whatever works archived must work exploded and vice versa.