Directory structure for the new Data Services Project

Question

1) I do as prescribed in the manual "Building and deploying
Flex 2 Applications", page 325
"To create a web application make a copy of the /flex
directory and its contents. Rename the copy and store it in the
same location under /servers/default directory."
("flex" is an empty Flex Data Services application that
serves as a template for creating your custom application)
2) I create a corresponding project from Flex Builder 2 :
Project type: Flex Data Services
Root folder: C:\fds2\jrun4\servers\default\MyDS
Root URL:
http://localhost:8700/default/MyDS
Project name: MyDS
Project contents: C:\fds2\jrun4\servers\default\MyDS
2) I build the project
Immediately after "build project" the directory structure at
C:\fds2\jrun4\servers\default\MyDS becomes the following:
.settings
bin
----------------META-INF
----------------WEB-INF
---------------- --------------- classes
---------------- ---------------flex
--------------------------------jsp
--------------------------------lib
-------------------------------sessions
html-template
META-INF
WEB-INF
----------------classes
----------------flex
----------------jsp
----------------lib
----------------sessions
Notice that bin directory now contains another pair of
META-INF and WEB-INF in addition to those already existing in the
template project "flex".
Can anybody comment on this directory structure?
Which META-INF and WEB-INF are supposed to be used for
configuration?
What is the purpose of having two pairs of META-INF and
WEB-INF in the same web app?

Answer 1

Hello -
first, those folders are necessary in deployment - You need
only the contents of the bin folder for deployment, not the
sources. Since you're compiling the application locally in FB2 it
places all of the supporting and necessary files into one location
namely the "bin" folder. You'd deploy the "bin" folder's contents
to the FDS server, perhaps another FDS server that is not your
"development" server -- like a production server. The data and
configuration information that your app needs for FDS services are
stored in the WEB-INF and META-INF folders so these need to travel
with the final product. On the production server you'd just cop the
"bin" folder and it's contents to the /servers/default folder -
where you could then rename your bin folder to "MyDS"
HTH, Bill