Question

I have inherited an app which is packaged as ear file that has inside

 - ear :
        -APP-INF/lib (persitence.jar - hibernate+spring ... etc)
        -war (web-services)
        -jar (mdb)
        -jar (mdb)

As I studied the app noticed that each module has inside the jar creates it’s own Spring application context that is loaded on runtime.

It works ok but it would not be better to have only one application context ?
I wonder what are the benefits and drawback which this structure compared to the one where it is only an single application context used ?

To be more clear on runtime there are 3 application context roots loaded.It is not only that there are more application context files

Thanks

Answer 1

first of all: are you sure it isn’t the same application context everywhere ? have you tested this ?

if they are all seperate:
the advantage is that those application contexts are shielded from eachother, which you could call loose coupling, which is a good thing; one can’t influence the other, it keeps things clearer for the programmer.
the disadvantage is, it might be harder to access one application context from the other, but you can always find a way around this.