About the Oracle Application Server

After thorough testing is complete and the J2EE application is ready for deployment to a production environment, developers normally deliver the application, which is usually packaged as an Enterprise Archive (EAR) file, to the application server.

Oracle Application Server supports Oracle Application Server Containers for J2EE (OC4J). These are containers for the J2EE APIs which enable users to run their J2EE-based applications in the standard Java Development Kit (JDK) executing on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM).

An Oracle Application Server deployment uses its own Oracle Enterprise Manager OC4J instance:

Oracle Application Server deployments via DCM is possible since JDeveloper uses the DCM Servlet API which contains a server side and a client side. The server-side piece is an EAR file named Oc4jDcmServlet.ear.
Oracle Application Server deployments via the Oracle HTTP Server involves communication between the Oracle HTTP Server and its own embedded OC4J instance to deliver J2EE applications to Oracle Application Server. In this case, rather than deploying directly to OC4J, your system administrator uses the Oracle Enterprise Manager to deploy the application's EAR file. Specifically, the Oracle Enterprise Manager web site provides a process for deploying new applications into an OC4J server using the OC4J Enterprise Manager Home Page. You can also use the OC4J Home Page for high-availability, clustering, and other services.

After installing Oracle Application Server, see the Oracle Application Server Containers for J2EE User's Guide and Oracle Application Server 10g Administrator's Guide for instructions on how to configure data sources in OC4J to use against the Oracle database.

For general Oracle Application Server Container for J2EE information, updates, and links to forums and other resources, visit: http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/java/oc4j/