Web应用程序自动安装

Question

I need to have an autoinstall/update a web application running on JBoss 6.

I need at least to: * stop the server * copy the war in the deployment directory * apply DB update scripts * start the server

Do you know an tool or open source project for that?

Thx Christophe

Answer 1

Most Servlet containers have the ability to deploy without stopping the server. Some do it by dropping the WAR file in a specific directory which is polled by the webserver (if configured properly) while others expose "upload" web APIs.

JBoss typically uses Tomcat as its servlet container. While I don't know which version your version of JBoss is using, Tomcat has supported deploying on a running server for a very long time. Perhaps the documentation for Tomcat 5.5 is enough for you to determine what changes (if any) you need to make.

In the event that you really need to stop the server Tomcat has the ability to stop the server from an external program (it only requires the right kind of message to be sent); however, once stopped, Tomcat can't receive a "startup" message, it will have to be started manually.

A better solution would be to detect when the application started by looking at servlet lifecycle events, and then to "check" the database upon a "first started up" event. In the off chance that your database detection shows the database doesn't match the expected version, apply the changes. After the database detection shows the database is up-to-date, then start normal request processing. This isolates the code within your web application in such a manner that allows for easy deployment and upgrades, although it does mean more work in tailoring the application to encapsulate it's own database maintenance duties.

In the event that such a technique isn't an option, you will have to rely on an external tool to get the job done. Typically such a tool requires heavy integration of resources (sometimes across multiple machines). In such a case, an Enterprise Job Scheduler, or a workflow engine (with your own written adapters) is generally applied to solve the issues at hand.

Answer 2

For information, we finally implemented our own solution. Basically

1. One job downloads from a FTP a ZIP file containing an installer application written in Java
2. One unzipped, the installer is run. This one executes SQL update scripts, then deploy the WAR file using the JBoss JMX API. However for JBoss cluster support, we had to write our own MBean in order to copy the WAR file on each node.