As a general rule, strive to keep your webapp self-contained and autonomous with only J2EE-standard dependencies (things like JNDI objects that are configurable in every container). Unless there's a reason not to (JDBC drivers is one common one), package your own dependent libraries with your app -- it frees you from versioning problems (maintaining the correct library versions for your app over time) and makes migration between containers much easier.
Thanks. You bring up an interesting aspect of container configuration: database drivers. It would be interesting to extend the META-INF/context.xml tomcat convention to include support for the installation of 3rd party libraries. E.g., libraries placed in META-INF/server/lib will be placed into the similiar tomcat directory on deployment. Same thing for common/lib.
Interesting idea. It could be useful for some people (especially those with simple setups), but I think just about every administrator out there would shutter at the thought of some random webApp modifying the libraries that all other webApps use. That and if you need to support multiple containers, you're still SOL.
I haven't used the META-INF/context.xml convention, so I'm not too familiar with it. Conceptually, it's questionable whether a webapp should be able to modify container configuration ... even if it's just configuration for that one app. Practically it may be useful, but it's a bluring of the lines of responsibility between the development and deployment -- two things which really should be separate.
justin
PS: Kinda funny how only us West Coasters tend to post between the hours of 3-7pm PST.
______________________________________________ Justin Ruthenbeck Software Engineer, NextEngine Inc. justinr - AT - nextengine DOT com Confidential. See: http://www.nextengine.com/confidentiality.php ______________________________________________
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