Best location for application files

Question

In our current WebLogic environment (WLS 4.51), we have seperate document roots
for each of te 12 seperate applications being served up in seperate WebLogic instances.
We are migrating to WLS6.1, and I am not sure if I should continue this practice.
All applications will be under the same domain, and some common utility .jar and
.war files may be targeted to several servers in the domain (email servelts, search
servlets, etc.). However, I am no tsure I want all these directories or .jar/.war
files to beunder the same "applications" folder. If I put them under /apps/Java/$app_name/
I can deploy them fine from the console. If I do this, will I lose the auto_deploy
feature? Is there any inherent dangers to doing this? Mostly, I want to keep app1's
files in a different location than app2's.

Answer 1

Please see my inline replies:
Mark wrote:
In our current WebLogic environment (WLS 4.51), we have seperate document roots for each of
te 12 seperate applications being served up in seperate WebLogic instances.
We are migrating to WLS6.1, and I am not sure if I should continue this practice.
All applications will be under the same domain, and some common utility .jar and
war files may be targeted to several servers in the domain (email servelts, search
servlets, etc.). However, I am no tsure I want all these directories or .jar/.war
files to beunder the same "applications" folder. If I put them under /apps/Java/$app_name/
I can deploy them fine from the console. If I do this, will I lose the auto_deploy
feature?Yes. if you are keeping your applications outside of the applications directory they would not
be auto-deployed. It is necessary to keep the applications in the
/config/domain_name/applications directory, if you want to have the auto-deploy feature to
work. Also, we recommend to use auto-deployment only during development and turn off the
feature in the prod environment.
Is there any inherent dangers to doing this? Mostly, I want to keep app1's
files in a different location than app2's.Maybe this strategy helps you:
You can have all the applications in the applications directory in the exploded dir format. In
this case, they will be auto-deployed on the Admin server. Using the console, you can target
them to different servers in the domain (analogous to different WLS 451 server instances).
Now, if you change a particular file (jsp) in the webApp, then you will need to just touch the
REDEPLOY file. The Admin server will check that the timestamp for this file has changed and
redeploy the application to the concerned target servers.
So, by maintaining an exploded directory structure for each webApp in the applications
directory, you will be able to keep the files separate and still achieve redeployment.
More details can be found at:
http://e-docs.bea.com/wls/docs61////adminguide/appman.html#1029683
Also, as everything is a webApp now, each webApp has its own documentRoot. So if you have 12
webApps, each has a different docRoot automatically.
hope this helps.
Mihir