Infocenter

The infocenter is a vehicle for making the Eclipse user assistance system and documentation plug-ins available over the Internet or an intranet. Users interact with the infocenter in a web browser. The infocenter functionality is available in the Eclipse SDK software and it may be packaged as a separate Web Application Archive (WAR) file. When packaged as a WAR file, the infocenter may be run in common Java Enterprise Edition application servers.

The Infocenter in a WAR File

The components of the infocenter and a template for the WAR file are available from the Eclipse SDK. Packaging the infocenter involves adding its functional components to the WAR file template along with the documentation plugins that will be delivered. Then all the files are compiled into a WAR file. Instructions are available in the Eclipse SDK documentation [1].

Deploying the WAR file in a Java application server makes the user interface of the infocenter available to network users. In general, the WAR file is placed in a designated directory in the application server installation directory. When you run the application server program, it unpacks and deploys the components of the WAR file. While the application server is running, the infocenter user interface may be opened in a web browser at a URL composed of the server host name, port number, and an application directory path. Application servers include varying deployment and configuration options. Specific configurations for delivering infocenter content to internet or internal network users requires that you understand general application server usage and the particular server product that you choose.

Configurations for the JBoss Application Server

The JBoss application server [2] is one Java application server that may be used to deploy the infocenter WAR file. There are some packaging steps and deployment considerations for the infocenter WAR file that are specific to this application server.

Like other application servers, JBoss reads deployment instructions from a file called web.xml. It reads additional instructions from a file called jboss-web.xml that is packaged in the WEB-INF directory along with the standard web.xml file. Many deployment configurations may be set in this file. One configuration that affects the infocenter is shown in the example content below.

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
   <!DOCTYPE jboss-web PUBLIC "-//JBoss//DTD Web Application 2.3V2//EN" 
     "http://www.jboss.org/j2ee/dtd/jboss-web_3_2.dtd">
   <jboss-web>
     <class-loading>
       <loader-repository>com.example:archive=war-file-name.war</loader-repository>
     </class-loading>
   </jboss-web>

The loader-repository configuration for an infocenter WAR file gives JBoss a separate space in which to instantiate the infocenter classes. This becomes important if you deploy more than one infocenter WAR file in the same application server. Unless each separate infocenter instance has its own class loading space, they will interfere with and disrupt each other while running.