Complex? Don't say the
word complex.
With Tomcat you just drop a war into the right folder, and it magically deploys. With WebSPhere, it's not that simple, but don't say it's complex.
With WebSphere, you have to tell the tool about your war. Simply go to the link to "deploy applicatoin" and browse to your war file. You will be asked for a context root, which is defined in the application.xml file of an ear, so since you're deploying a war, it's not pre-defined. Then, you just have to confirm a few things, and Bob's your uncle.
Of course, you're doing this through the WebSphere Admin Console. Maybe I should have mentioned that. I think the URL is localhost:9090/admin, assuming you don't have security turned on. And the deployment manager, or the 'node agent' for server1 must be started if you're not running in a network deployed environment. The admin console is itself a
J2EE application, so the deployment manager or server1 must be started for the admin console to come up.
Now having said all this, you can deploy using a JACL script as well, but that's probably way far ahead in your future. This is a good link to scare you though.
http://www.technicalfacilitation.com/scripting/installEar.jacl I've got a multimedia tutorial on deploying a J2EE application to WAS 5, called "Lock and Load Deploy"
http://www.technicalfacilitation.com/examscam/get.php?link=../was/tutorials This is as complex as deploying an EAR to WAS gets, as I set up
JDBC drivers, configure message queues, deploy CMP beans, and send it all to the server. But with a war, you really only have to point to the war and click the finish button. Nevertheless, watching even the first minute of the tutorial will give you a pretty clear idea on how to do this with WebSphere 6. The screens are practically the same, although the theme of the admin console changed a bit between 5 and 6.
If you are still having problems, post another message. I'll check back later today. Include the WAS version you are running, and any details about the war that might make it more complex than just a vanilla
JSP application.
Oh, one other thing. In the bin directory of WAS, there is a utility called serverStatus. Issue the command serverStatus -all to ensure that a server, either server1 or the dmgr is running. If not, you may need to issue a startManager command, or startServer server1 command. It depends on how your WAS architecture is set up.
Cheers!
-Cameron McKenzie