About Deployment Profiles

Deployment profiles are project components that govern the packaging and deployment of a project or application. A deployment profile names the source files, deployment descriptors, and other auxiliary files that will be packages, the type and name of the archive file to be created, dependency information, platform-specific instructions, and other information.

Deployment profiles can be created in various ways:

Use one of the wizards from the General - Deployment Profiles category of the New Gallery (choose File | New to open he New Gallery). The new deployment profile will be added to your project as a file in the Deployment folder.
If your project has a web.xml file, you can right-click it and choose Create WAR Deployment Profile .
If your project has a ejb-jar.xml file, you can right-click it and choose Create EJB JAR Deployment Profile.
If your project has an application module, you can right-click it and choose Business Components Deployment .

To modify an existing deployment profile, double-click to open its dialog interface.

To activate a deployment profile:

right-click it and choose one of its deployment options.
OR
Choose an option from the Run | Deploy submenu.

The project and any projects on which it depends will be compiled and packaged.

About Packaging

Packaging is the process of assembling an archive file from its component files. Packaging is specified in the File Groups branch of deployment profile properties dialogs.

The File Groups branch consists of a list of file groups, each specifying some components. The packaged archive will be the union of all the file groups. The order of the file groups resolves name collisions: if two files have the same name, the one from the file group higher in the list is included, and the one from the lower file group is omitted.

A newly created deployment profile will include one or more predefined file groups. You can add, delete, and edit file groups.

File groups are defined by a set of contributors pruned by a set of filters. Contributors are source files, JAR files, and directories that are selected for inclusion. Filters are rules that are applied the contributors or contributors component subdirectories and files to identify the set and files that will be packaged. There are three kinds of file groups:

Packaging file group contributors are project directories and other directories and JAR files. The packaging file group mechanism is flexible and transparent, and is appropriate for most projects.
Dependency analysis file group contributors are selected project files and their dependencies. The dependency analysis is the packaging mechanism provided in JDeveloper prior to version 9.0.5.1 Profiles created in 9.0.5.1 or subsequent releases will not contain a Dependency Analysis file group by default. Profiles migrated from previous versions will contain a Dependency Analysis file group.
Libraries file group contributors are project libraries. A libraries file groups is created for WAR deployment profiles. Libraries files groups are useful in other projects that need to repackage existing JAR files.

About Deployment Dependencies

Deployment dependencies between the components of an application are stated in their project's deployment profiles. In a project's deployment profile, name the profiles for the projects that are immediately upstream. When a deployment profile is activated for deployment, its dependencies will first be deployed.

Set deployment profile dependencies on the deployment profile's Profile Dependencies page. Only deployment profiles in the current workspace are listed and available for selection. Click the Help button for more information.

The various profile dependencies you can select include:

Profile-to-profile dependency
Profile-to-JAR dependency
Profile-to-WAR dependency
Profile-to-RAR (Resource Archive) dependency

When deploying a profile contained in a project that has project-to-profile dependencies on other profiles, at deploy-time the profile incorporates the dependencies specified in the project. For example, if Project1.jpr contains Servlet1.java and webapp1.deploy, and depends on ejb1.jar, and project2.jpr contains MySessionEJB and ejb1.jar, then deploying webapp1.deploy results in an EAR file containing both webapp1.war and ejb1.jar.

When creating profile dependencies between JAR, WAR, and EJB JAR modules that share common JAR files, you can use the META-INF/MANIFEST.MF Class-Path attribute to link JAR files together at deploy-time. From the deployment profile properties JAR options page, select Include Manifest File (META-INF/MANIFEST.MF) . Doing so causes a single shared copy of any common JARs to be included in the EAR file.

Dependency projects can have dependencies of their own, but cyclical dependencies should be avoided. When JDeveloper encounters a circular dependency it will attempt to deploy anyway, but a warning will be displayed in the log window.