JBoss EAR structure

Could somebody please tell me how an EAR is supposed to be organized if it were to have:
- A WAR
- An EJB jar
- A couple of classes jars
- A SAR (that should run before the EAR is started)

I've looked through the JBoss documentation but they don't explain how to embed things in an EAR well beyond "here's how you make a sar" and "here's how you make a war and an ear..."
How should the application.xml look like? How many jboss-app.xml files are needed? Where would the jboss-service.xml file go under?

Thanks in advance for your assistance.

John,

Welcome to JavaRanch

How many jboss-app.xml files are needed?

One per EAR.

Where would the jboss-service.xml file go under?

Under the META-INF folder of the SAR.

Here's how i package my application:
<blockquote>code:

<pre name="code" class="core">
MyApp.ear
|
|
|--- META-INF
||
||--- application.xml
||
||--- jboss-app.xml
|
|
|--- MyApp.war
|
|
|--- MyAppEJB.jar
|
|
|--- lib
||--- MyOtherUtils.jar
|
|
|--- MyApp.sar
||
||--- META-INF
|||
|||--- jboss-service.xml

</pre>

</blockquote>

application.xml:
<blockquote>code:

<pre name="code" class="core">
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE application PUBLIC "-//Sun Microsystems, Inc.//DTD J2EE Application 1.3//EN" "http://java.sun.com/dtd/application_1_3.dtd">
<application>
<display-name>MyApp</display-name>
<module>
<web>
<web-uri>MyApp.war</web-uri>
<context-root>/MyApp</context-root>
</web>
</module>
<module>
<ejb>MyAppEJB.jar</ejb>
</module>

</application></pre>

</blockquote>

jboss-app.xml:
<blockquote>code:

<pre name="code" class="core">
<jboss-app>

<module>
<service>MyApp.sar</service>
</module>

</jboss-app></pre>

</blockquote>

Hi Jaikiran. Thank you very much for the prompt reply. I appreciate your help.

To be honest with you, that is what I thought the setup of the EAR should look like, but wasn't sure which is why I asked. I made my EAR look just like what you suggested. It fails to start with an exception that it can't find the sar module.

<blockquote>code:

<pre name="code" class="core">
09:59:11,123 ERROR [MainDeployer] Could not initialise deployment: file:/C:/jboss-4.2.2.GA/server/default/deploy/MyEar.ear
org.jboss.deployment.DeploymentException: Failed to find module file: MySar.sar
at org.jboss.deployment.EARDeployer.init(EARDeployer.java:295)
at org.jboss.deployment.MainDeployer.init(MainDeployer.java:872)
at org.jboss.deployment.MainDeployer.deploy(MainDeployer.java:809)
at org.jboss.deployment.MainDeployer.deploy(MainDeployer.java:782)
at sun.reflect.GeneratedMethodAccessor21.invoke(Unknown Source)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
at org.jboss.mx.interceptor.ReflectedDispatcher.invoke(ReflectedDispatcher.java:155)
at org.jboss.mx.server.Invocation.dispatch(Invocation.java:94)
at org.jboss.mx.interceptor.AbstractInterceptor.invoke(AbstractInterceptor.java:133)
at org.jboss.mx.server.Invocation.invoke(Invocation.java:88)
at org.jboss.mx.interceptor.ModelMBeanOperationInterceptor.invoke(ModelMBeanOperationInterceptor.java:142)
at org.jboss.mx.server.Invocation.invoke(Invocation.java:88)
at org.jboss.mx.server.AbstractMBeanInvoker.invoke(AbstractMBeanInvoker.java:264)
at org.jboss.mx.server.MBeanServerImpl.invoke(MBeanServerImpl.java:659)
at org.jboss.mx.util.MBeanProxyExt.invoke(MBeanProxyExt.java:210)
at $Proxy9.deploy(Unknown Source)
at org.jboss.deployment.scanner.URLDeploymentScanner.deploy(URLDeploymentScanner.java:421)
at org.jboss.deployment.scanner.URLDeploymentScanner.scan(URLDeploymentScanner.java:634)
at org.jboss.deployment.scanner.AbstractDeploymentScanner$ScannerThread.doScan(AbstractDeploymentScanner.java:263)
at org.jboss.deployment.scanner.AbstractDeploymentScanner.startService(AbstractDeploymentScanner.java:336)
at org.jboss.system.ServiceMBeanSupport.jbossInternalStart(ServiceMBeanSupport.java:289)
at org.jboss.system.ServiceMBeanSupport.jbossInternalLifecycle(ServiceMBeanSupport.java:245)
at sun.reflect.GeneratedMethodAccessor3.invoke(Unknown Source)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
at org.jboss.mx.interceptor.ReflectedDispatcher.invoke(ReflectedDispatcher.java:155)
at org.jboss.mx.server.Invocation.dispatch(Invocation.java:94)
at org.jboss.mx.server.Invocation.invoke(Invocation.java:86)
at org.jboss.mx.server.AbstractMBeanInvoker.invoke(AbstractMBeanInvoker.java:264)
at org.jboss.mx.server.MBeanServerImpl.invoke(MBeanServerImpl.java:659)
at org.jboss.system.ServiceController$ServiceProxy.invoke(ServiceController.java:978)
at $Proxy0.start(Unknown Source)
at org.jboss.system.ServiceController.start(ServiceController.java:417)
at sun.reflect.GeneratedMethodAccessor9.invoke(Unknown Source)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
at org.jboss.mx.interceptor.ReflectedDispatcher.invoke(ReflectedDispatcher.java:155)
at org.jboss.mx.server.Invocation.dispatch(Invocation.java:94)
at org.jboss.mx.server.Invocation.invoke(Invocation.java:86)
at org.jboss.mx.server.AbstractMBeanInvoker.invoke(AbstractMBeanInvoker.java:264)
at org.jboss.mx.server.MBeanServerImpl.invoke(MBeanServerImpl.java:659)
at org.jboss.mx.util.MBeanProxyExt.invoke(MBeanProxyExt.java:210)
at $Proxy4.start(Unknown Source)
at org.jboss.deployment.SARDeployer.start(SARDeployer.java:302)
at org.jboss.deployment.MainDeployer.start(MainDeployer.java:1025)
at org.jboss.deployment.MainDeployer.deploy(MainDeployer.java:819)
at org.jboss.deployment.MainDeployer.deploy(MainDeployer.java:782)
at org.jboss.deployment.MainDeployer.deploy(MainDeployer.java:766)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
at org.jboss.mx.interceptor.ReflectedDispatcher.invoke(ReflectedDispatcher.java:155)
at org.jboss.mx.server.Invocation.dispatch(Invocation.java:94)
at org.jboss.mx.interceptor.AbstractInterceptor.invoke(AbstractInterceptor.java:133)
at org.jboss.mx.server.Invocation.invoke(Invocation.java:88)
at org.jboss.mx.interceptor.ModelMBeanOperationInterceptor.invoke(ModelMBeanOperationInterceptor.java:142)
at org.jboss.mx.server.Invocation.invoke(Invocation.java:88)
at org.jboss.mx.server.AbstractMBeanInvoker.invoke(AbstractMBeanInvoker.java:264)
at org.jboss.mx.server.MBeanServerImpl.invoke(MBeanServerImpl.java:659)
at org.jboss.mx.util.MBeanProxyExt.invoke(MBeanProxyExt.java:210)
at $Proxy5.deploy(Unknown Source)
at org.jboss.system.server.ServerImpl.doStart(ServerImpl.java:482)
at org.jboss.system.server.ServerImpl.start(ServerImpl.java:362)
at org.jboss.Main.boot(Main.java:200)
at org.jboss.Main$1.run(Main.java:508)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:619)
09:59:11,346 ERROR [URLDeploymentScanner] Incomplete Deployment listing:

--- Incompletely deployed packages ---
org.jboss.deployment.DeploymentInfo@d555dc67 { url=file:/C:/jboss-4.2.2.GA/server/default/deploy/MyEar.ear }
deployer: org.jboss.deployment.EARDeployer@11415c8
status: null
state: FAILED
watch: file:/C:/jboss-4.2.2.GA/server/default/deploy/MyEar.ear
altDD: null
lastDeployed: 1216216751122
lastModified: 1216216751011
mbeans:
</pre>

</blockquote>

Now, I played around with it for a bit and it seems like I can't get it to see the sar for some reason. I'm not doing anything special with anything I don't think.
I'm sure it's probably something stupid, but I just can't seem to find it.

Thanks again.

Post the output of the following command (run it on the ear which is present in the deploy folder):

<blockquote>code:

<pre name="code" class="core">jar -tf MyEar.ear</pre>

</blockquote>