Class Path for EJB.jar of an ear file

[Fred Close]

Hi,
I've got an ear file with several ejb.jar files and one war file ... I would like to specify in the class path of the ejbs jar files some jar files contained in the war file is it possible ?
I know how to specify the class-path in manifest file but how can I specify a jar file inside a war in that class path ?
FREd

[Chris Mathews]

Ejb jars cannot reference classes that are loaded in a war because of how the classloader works in WebLogic. The common classes between the ejbs and the war must be extracted and placed in somewhere accessable by both.
The quick solution is to put them on WebLogic's CLASSPATH, of course the drawback is the lack of dynamic deployment of these common classes.
The flexible solution is to package the common jar in the ear and refer to it in your ejb jar's manifest. Since the war classloader is a child of the ejb classloader, these will also be available to the war. BTW, this behavior is guaranteed by the specification so it should be fairly vendor neutral as well.

[Fred Close]

thanks for your answer Chris,
the only problem I have with your solution is that some of the common jars have to be in the war file, because the client of our application is an applet and needs to download some jar file and so those jar files have to be in the war.
So what I did is, as you said, have the common jars directly in the ear and for the common which also have to be downloaded by the client they are also present in the war file. It's working ok but I wanted to know if it's possible to do the packaging without duplicating jar files between the ear and the war.

[Rahul Mahindrakar]

Hi,
As Chris stated earlier the solution to your problem is to put the common files in the Weblogic Server classpath. This would solve your problem.
Howeever you will not be able to make changes to these files unless the server is shut down and restarted.

[Fred Close]

Hi,
I've placed the common jar files directly in the ear but some jar files needs also to be in the ware file because an applet needs to download them ... so I'm forced to duplicate those jar files in my ear.