Building SOA portfolio Business Services, part 6th: Automating build and deploy steps

Background knowledge

Composite applications can be created by loosely coupling multiple different services and data stores in a service-oriented architecture (service-oriented Architecture,soa) framework. The SCA specification (see the links provided in the Resources section) describes the models used to build and assemble applications and systems using SOA. Composite applications often use rational tools such as IBM Rational application Developer to develop as stand-alone projects and then assemble them as SCA modules using IBM Websphere Integration Developer Block. Finally, these assembled packages are deployed in a hosting environment that contains the IBM WebSphere Portal Server, the IBM WebSphere Process Server container, and the IBM db2® database server. However, many of the build and export steps in the Rational application Developer and WebSphere integration Developer, as well as the WebSphere Portal Server and WebSphere Pr The deployment steps in ocess Server are manual GUI pointing-click Steps. In this article, you will learn how to automate these manual steps.

Composite application WebSphere Runtime Environment

The following versions of the WebSphere server are used in the deployment environment:

IBM WebSphere Process Server V6.0.1, which includes IBM WebSphere Application Server V6.0.2

IBM WebSphere Portal Server V6.0

IBM DB2 Universal Database V8.2

IBM Directory Server V5.2

Automated builds will use the following versions of IBM build tools:

IBM Rational Software Architect V6.0.1, which also includes IBM Rational application Developer V6.0.1

IBM WebSphere Portlet Factory V6.0

IBM WebSphere Integration Developer V6.0.1

Automatically build solutions

Apache Ant is a java-based build tool that developers typically use to automate Java programs (see Resources For more information about Apache ant Project). Eclipse provides Ant support as the default feature (see Resources for more information on Eclipse Ant support). In this solution, you will use the RunAnt tool in the Rational application Developer to start the Headless Eclipse workspace and execute the ANT build script (see Resources for links). WebSphere integration Developer and Rational application Developer provide an Eclipse builder that handles different types of composite application projects. Examples of these projects created within the WebSphere integration Developer and Rational application Developer include business integration modules, Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) projects, dynamic We B Project and Portlet project. You can find a set of build programs for each project in the. project file in the project's top-level directory. In the build automation process, you can include these builders with ANT as provided by the Rational application Developer, WebSphere integration Developer, and WebSphere Portlet Factory Work together for reuse.

The build automation process uses the following Ant tasks:

SVN checkout, which is used to check out the project source code from the SubVersion (SVN) team repository.

Projectsetimport, which is used to import a project set into the Eclipse workspace.

Projectsetbuild, used to build a project set using the Eclipse Builder.

The WebSphere portlet Factory Ant script, which is used to package the portlet as a WAR file.

Earexport, which is used to package WEB services and EJB components together with JAR files as EAR files.

Moduleexport, which is used to package SCA module projects and dependent projects in Webshpere integration Developer as compressed files.