What is the best (easiest, most seamless) way to build a Java app while relying as little as possible on the actual application-server used in deployment?
For example, say I want to deploy on Apache Geronimo, and later want to use GlassFish, how difficult would the transition be? What is the best way to abstract the use of each app server?
Excuse my ignorance, I’m relatively new to Java development. I want to start a new project, but am unsure on whether to use separate APIs for the functionality I need or develop on top of a chosen app-server from the start.
Thanks for your help,
Ivan
Without getting into too much details, even though you can write bare-bones Java EE code, the configuration around it is not very simple. Each application server has its own set of configuration files and naming conventions (for example, the format for specifying the location of the AS is different in IBM WAS and in JBOSS). Though these are not very important for application development, once you get to the deployment phase, these will become important.
As far as the libraries and your code is concerned as long as you stick to EJB standards you will be able to run your application on majority of the application servers (I know of WAS and JBoss – the code that I wrote didn’t have to change for these servers; the configuration though, well that was a different beast !).