Common deployment framework

The common deployment framework enables you to implement plug-ins that add steps to default Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) application management operations such as install, uninstall, edit and update.

Using the framework, you can implement management operations on specific types of deployable contents. For example, the deployable contents might include EAR, WAR, JAR or other Java EE modules and the management operations might include install and uninstall. Each operation is divided into a number of steps. For example, the install operation has steps for EJBDeploy and JavaServer Pages (JSP) compilation, among others. Using the common deployment framework, you can add steps to the default logic for Java EE operations.

The product supports framework plug-ins that extend deployment of EAR files. An EAR file has operations such as createEarWrapper, installApplication, uninstallApplication and editApplication. Using a framework plug-in, you can add steps to default install operations that support, for example, creating additional configuration artifacts in a configuration session, modifying an input EAR file using code generation, or additional validating of input parameters.

To extend application management operations using the framework, a plug-in must do the following:

• Implement each step.

  A step runs logic that performs an operation. A step can access the deployment context and the deployable object. The deployment context provides information such as the operation name, the configuration session identifier, the temporary location for creating temporary files, operations parameters, and the like. A step is added by the extension provider.

• Implement an extension provider that adds each implemented step.

  An extension provider is a class that provides steps for an operation on a given type, the EAR file type.

• Register the plug-in with a WebSphere® Application Server server.

  The plug-in is implemented as an Eclipse plug-in and is placed in app_server_root/plugins directory. Add the extension point for the extension provider in the META-INF/plugin.xml file within the plug-in JAR file.

For an example of these steps, refer to Extending application management operations through programming.