A J2EE application in archive format stores the J2EE application entities, such as EJB and servlets, in the J2EE server work directory.

The following figure shows an overview of J2EE applications in the archive format.

Figure 1-8 Overview of J2EE applications in archive format

To execute a J2EE application in the archive format, you archive the created programs in an EJB-JAR file and a WAR file, archive the EJB-JAR file and the WAR file in an EAR file, and then deploy the application to the J2EE server.

If a program is revised, you redeploy the J2EE application after re-executing the archive and deployment operations. Note that if you use the redeploy functionality, you can redeploy the J2EE application after inheriting all the property information of that J2EE application.

With the archive format, you create the J2EE application as an EAR file and include the WAR file and EJB-JAR file in the EAR file. This section describes the configuration of J2EE applications deployed in the archive format.

The following figure shows an example of an EAR file configuration.

Figure 1-9 Example of an EAR file configuration

The WAR files and EJB-JAR files are configured in the EAR file as described below.

• WAR file
  The WAR file includes the following files:
  
  • JSPs
  • Servlets
  • DD (for the WAR file)
• EJB-JAR file
  The EJB-JAR file includes the following files:
  
  • Enterprise Beans
  • DD (for the EJB-JAR file))

Note that you can also use JavaBeans to implement Enterprise Bean. In this case, an EJB-JAR file will not be created.