Remote deployment from iAS to iAS

Question

Hello,
I'm new to iAS and need some info/suggestions about deployment in this scenario:
Host A (source) : 1.0.2.2.1 iAS + 9.0.2 OC4J standalone (from zip).
Host B (destination) : 9.0.3.0.0 (build 020927.1699) iAS with OC4J managed by iAS, OHS and WebCache (not Portal,etc.).
We want to deploy the ear files from Host A (development iAS) to Host B (production iAS).It seems we have this choices:
1.with Web-EM (http://hostname:1810) from a client-browser, but it searches the ear locally.
2.with admin.jar : we obtain this error because in the Host B there is no RMI port listening:
$ java -jar /ORACLE/OAS1/j2ee/home/admin.jar ormi://asub.ub.edu/ admin manager
-deploy -file app.ear -deploymentName app
Error: javax.naming.NamingException: ...
Connection refused
3. within the directories in Host B and manually editing XML's: this is the way in Development (Host A) but it's not what we want in Production (implies OS users to Host B).
4.With command-line DCMCTL , it works but only locally from Host B, not from Host A.
5.With JDeveloper, from the developer PC. This is a problem when the ear is large and the PC is not in our network.
I think the best option is (2), with admin.jar , but it fails if the destination Host is not a standalone OC4J (in this case exists a RMI port listening) and we want the pack iAS+OC4J(because also includes OHS,Webcache...)
Would you please indicate how do we deploy to Host B from ear files located at Host A with admin.jar ??
And if it's not possible, could you please indicate references/possible solutions??
Thanks in advance,
Robert.

Answer 1

Hmmm.
We don't use JDeveloper. We will have many external contractors delivering j2ee applications which they developed at their own environment (tomcat,jboss etc) to our win2k delivery terminal server running IAS903 core. They are required to use ANT to build their ear files, deploy their applications, test, make changes and redeploy.... We can't have someone just to sit there to redeploy the app for them! We do migrate their finished apps to our test and production environment.
Currently our delivery environment is oc4j10221 standalone which can hot redeploy an app when a new ear file is detacted and server.xml/global-web-app.xml timestamp are "touched" so the contractors can easily manage their iterations of application delivery.
What is the best way to let the contractors to run their own show in IAS903 core without me getting phone calls to redeploy their apps every 10 minutes?
We need to run IAS903 core in delivery because we keep the exactly same s/w & h/w across environments so we don't have surprises later on.
delivery->test->production (all win2k & ias903 core)
Thx.
Ken