J2EE Server API Module

Overview

J2EE Server API module (in short, j2eeserver module) facilitates deployment of applications from within the IDE to different J2EE server platforms.  It defines J2EE Development Module API and J2EE Server Integration API. 

The Development Module API help development modules such as Web App or EJB project,...exchange application deployment information such as application content, stardard deployment descriptors and common (still not standard yet) configuration data...

The Server Integration API provide the IDE with an insulation from the detailed difference between J2EE server platforms.  These differences are handled by server integration plugins providing services through the plugin API.

J2eeserver module use the standard J2EE deployment specification  (JSR-88, version 1.1) implementation for configuration and deployment.  In addtion to an XML editor to edit server specific deployment descriptors, it also provides a graphical editor to take advantage of the provided ConfigBean's.  However, current JSR-88 deployment could not take advantage of the file-based deployment capability available on many server platforms.  Optional extensions to JSR-88 IncremenalDeployment facilitate fast iterative desployment. 

Server automatic state management and its StartServer interface provides a tighter user experience integration with the IDE interm of execution and debugging.

Server Integration plugins need to declare JSR-88 and its extension implementation through its plugin-layer-file.xml and an additional deployment XML. The whole J2EE Integration API can be accessed here.

There currently is an on-going effort to simplify the writing of a new server integration plugin based on Ant tasks provided by server platform.