Chapter 3. Deploying applications
This chapter covers
- Understanding application deployment
- Understanding class loading
- Fixing common deployment errors
- Deploying miscellaneous applications
In a way, JBoss AS is much like a new house that you’ve purchased. The house has floors, doors, windows, walls and a roof, all of which correspond to the services provided by JBoss AS. Although these things do keep the rain off of your head and shield you from the wind, they don’t add character to a house; they don’t make it a home.
To make a house into a home, you add the furnishings, the decorations, and other items that give both purpose and character to each room. Similarly, you have to add applications to JBoss AS to provide it with personality, utility, and purpose. As a table, chairs, and dinnerware can transform an empty room with four walls into a dining room in which to entertain friends or family, a well-crafted web application deployed to JBoss AS can convert it into an inviting website for your customers to visit.
The whole purpose of an application server is to run applications. But before you can run those applications, they must be deployed. This chapter discusses the types of applications (and we use that term loosely) that can be deployed and how deployment works within the JBoss AS. Let’s look, first, at what it means to deploy an application.