Thursday, June 11, 2009

what is the difference between JAR, WAR and EAR files

jar - Java archive (file with .jar extension) [For simple java application]
war - Web archive (file with .war extension) [For simple java + jsp/servlet]
ear - Enterprise archive (file with .ear extension) [For simple java + jsp/servlet + EJB]

All three files are zipped file system and used for different purpose.

JAR : JAR is a platform-independent file format that aggregates many files into one. Typically a JAR file contains the class files and auxiliary resources like libraries files, properties file, image, sound etc.

WAR : It is used to deployed in web application like Tomcat. It typically contains servlets, JSPs and their supporting classes and files. A servlet container like Tomcat is required to deploy these file. There are special files and directories within a WAR file. A WAR has a specific directory structure. The top-level directory of a WAR is the document root (WEB-INF) of the application. The document root is where JSP pages, client-side classes and archives, and static Web resources are stored. WEB-INF contains web.xml, classes, lib and Tag library descriptor files.

EAR : An EAR file is a standard JAR file with a .ear extension which is a generally J2EE application. It contains one or more entries representing the modules of the application, and a metadata directory called META-INF which contains one or more deployment descriptors. It is a top-level container which contains modules like: EJB modules, web modules, application client modules etc and deployed to an application server like WebLogic, WebSphere, JBOSS, etc. It might contain WARs, JARs, etc.

JAR -> WAR -> EAR

EAR = WAR(Web module) + JAR(can be EJB module or application client module)

Posted by Binod Suman at 9:54 AM

3 comments:

  1. AnonymousAugust 11, 2010 at 4:02 AM

    Hi Binod,

    Everything is fine. But my suggestion is why dont you try to create videos with explanations of all your stuff. I think that will be very useful and helpful and easy to understand also.

    and I am very much impressed with your work and want to follow all your posts.
    you can mail me hkravi@gmail.com

    Thanks,
    Ravi

    ReplyDelete
  2. venuJune 17, 2011 at 4:09 AM

    hi
    i thank u for the explanation u posted the above.
    N i should go with ravi the one who commented u. So if u had a chance plz go do video for explanation.

    thank u
    venu

    my mail id venu2006_b@yahoo.co.in.
    i'm weak in java. so if possible send ur works to my id.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousJanuary 7, 2012 at 6:37 AM

    Hi...i want to save an image object generated in an applet onto my laptop, as in, in a location i specify. Generally, only a BufferedImage object can be saved. Is there any way to save the Image object directly??

    ReplyDelete

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