spring jars: server classpath v. in ear/war

[tony_k]

anyone know which spring jars can safely be placed in server classpath and which jars are required to reside in the ear (e.g. in web-inf/lib)?

[Rod Johnson]

We normally recommend that J2EE deployment units are self-contained. That was the intention of the J2EE specs.

It is possible to place Spring Framework JARS on the server classpath; you may or may not encounter issues with this. It will depend on the app server or web container's class loader architecture, which is not standardized at this level and differs between products.

Trial and error is your best guide.

[tony_k]

thanks rod,

i can live with that.

do you follow the same policy for all dependency packages as well (e.g. hibernate, commons, etc)?

i.e. does your typical ear file contain like 50+ jar files?

if thats the best practice, then i'm cool with it, just taking a sanity check.

tony.

[Cowboy Bob]

That's best practice for any J2EE app, yes you can end up with 50 jars in the ear file.

Reason:-

Say you need to upgrade a library for one app and not another. What do you do if the library is on the server classpath?

Bob