HOWTO deploy a JClient App in a 3tier Environment : Road Map needed.

Question

I've a JClent App and I need to run it in a 3tier environment.
I mean I need to have as less code as possible running onto the client, distributed via Web Start, and as much code as possible running onto the Application Server (OC4J) in orer to take advantage of all Application Server facilities.
OC4J does it, BC4J does it, JDeveloper does it but I don't understand how.
I read the documentation but wasn't able to find my solution.
I need a conceptual roadmap wich helps me to select the right components as well as a step by step instruction to create all deployments needed.
Could someone help me ?
Could Oracle provide such roadmap (I suspece it would be usefull for many JDev users) ?
Tks
Tullio

Answer 1

Broadly the steps are
1. Create a JNLP file which describes
a) the list of jar files required
b) specify main entry point in the application
c) specify the security permissions required to run
The JCLient WebStart wizard creates a jnlp file to
perform the above.
a) The jar files required to run the JClient app includes
the BC4J runtime jars, JDBC jars, XML Parser jar etc.,
and Project specific jar (client and middle tier). All
these jar files are listed in the resources section
of local.jsp and localmt.jsp
<resources>
     <jar href="client.jar" />
     <jar href="mymt.zip" />
b) the main entry point is specified in local.jsp
<application-desc main-class="mypackage2.Panel1"/>
c) security permission should be requested in local.jsp
and localmt.jsp. The <security> tag should be child
element of <jnlp> tag
     <security><all-permissions/></security>
2) Sign the jar files
Since we request all permission in the jnlp we should also
sign the jar files that we use in the JClient application.
This includes JClient Project specific jar files, BC4J
Project specific jar files and then the BC4J runtime libraries.
Since the BC4J runtime jars and other dependent jar files can
be used in more than one client project they could be signed
once and can be reused.
BC4J\bin\create_jclient_ear.bat sign performs this step.
To archive Project specific class and sign them, JClient Wizard
creates an Ant script and adds it to your project. The file ctbuild.xml
includes targets to and sign the classes in the JClient project.
It also archives the BC4J Project which the JClient project is
dependent on.
3) Deploy the webstart application so that it can be accessed
by the end user.
a) deploy BC4J runtime and dependent jars to your web server.
For ease of deployment to OC4J, JClient wizard adds a ear
deployment profile to the project
b) deploy project jar files using the client deployment war
profile added to the project