Deploying ws to app server without Axis2 jars - Deployment Strategy

[Mat Anthony]

Hi All,
I have deployed ws (i.e war file) to an oc4j app server. I have placed the axis2 jar and other dependent jar
onto the classpath of the server under j2ee\home. The war file that I now deploy is very small.

I will be developing and deploying serveral ws in the future.

My question is:-
Is it a good approach to deploy ws to app servers without external files?

[Mat Anthony]

Just to rephrase the question.
Is it a good design practice to have all the common external jar files used by webservices on the servers classpath, so that further deployed ws (i.e. wars) will be able to access them after deployment, hence reducing deployment time down.

[Ulf Dittmer]

Depends a bit on the circumstances. I probably wouldn't do that, but that's not to say that nobody should :-)

Does deployment time really matter that much? Loading a bunch of jar files and starting up Axis doesn't take that long (less than a minute, even if all WS-Security jars are included).

Hard disk space also is no longer a factor these days.

I suppose if you have dozens of such WS web apps it would be justified to start thinking about memory consumption, but at that point I'd probably start thinking about deploying them in a single web app, yet keeping them independent (maybe by using OSGi).

Plus, you'd lose the ability to deploy another web app that uses a newer version of Axis (because the classes would clash with the ones in the server classpath).