EclipseLink/Examples/JPA/WebSphere Web Tutorial

EclipseLink JPA Deployed on IBM WebSphere 6.1 using Eclipse WTP

Note: This tutorial' is under construction for the next week as of 20080918.

If you want to get a small web application running quickly on WebSphere 6.1 - the services provided by the Web Tools Project pluggin in the Eclipse IDE can take care of the deployment details and set the server into debug mode for you.

This basic example details how to use Eclipse to run/debug a minimum J2EE web application servlet using EclipseLink JPA as the persistence provider. The goal of this example is to detail the minimum steps required to run EclipseLink inside the IBM WebSphere Application Server 6.1 server using the Eclipse IDE. At this point no presentation/controller layer such as JSF, Spring or Struts will be used beyond a basic HttpServlet so we can concentrate on the the integration layer JPA setup.

The DALI project was used to generate Entities from a schema with sequences already populated.

Development Environment

Software: Eclipse IDE for Java EE 3.4 Ganymede (June 2008 +) with all 5 packages (DTP 1.6, EMF 2.4, GEF 3.4, WTP 3.0, XSD 2.4), Derby Database 10.4, Java JDK 1.6.0_04, IBM WebSphere 6.1.0.0 with EJB3/JPA1 update

This example will run fine with any Database that EclipseLink supports.

Prerequisites

Install Eclipse EE

• I installed a clean version of Eclipse Ganymede (June 2008) with all of WTP 3.0

Install a Database

• In this example I am using the embedded Derby 10.4, the table schemas have already been created manually and all entity java classes may be generated using the Eclipse DALI tool.
• There is also an express version of IBM DB2 Express C 9.5 available

Install WebSphere 6.1

I installed the commercial 6.1.0.0 version with the EJB 3.0 fixpack and updates.

• download.updii.61017.windows.ia32.zip
• 6.1.0-WS-WASSDK-WinX32-FP0000017.pak
• 6.1.0-WS-WAS-WinX32-FP0000017.pak
• 6.1.0-WS-WASEJB3-WinX32-FP0000017.pak
• I augumented the original server profile

Install WebSphere Eclipse 3.4 Server Plugin

The WebSphere 6.1 server plugin is not shipped by default with Eclipse (WebSphere 6.0 for JEE 1.4 is) - you will need to update your Eclipse IDE to pick up the plugin. Note: I am currently looking for a WebSphere 6.1 plugin (As the 6.0 plugin requires you to stub missing jars in \your_server_root\was-6.0\properties)

Validating the WebSphere/Eclipse configuration

• In the servers view select New | Server

• Use the IBM|IBM WebSphere 6.1 Server plugin when creating a server

• Start the server to test the plugin

WebSphere Configuration Changes

WebSphere configuration modifications can be done on the admin console

Persistence.xml

The WebSphere 6.1 server is defined as "WebSphere_6_1"

• JTA : Put persistence.xml beside your JPA entities in yourProjectEJB/ejbModule/META-INF

<persistence version="1.0" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence/persistence_1_0.xsd">
  <persistence-unit name="unified" transaction-type="JTA">
    <provider>org.eclipse.persistence.jpa.PersistenceProvider</provider>
    <jta-data-source>jdbc/__default</jta-data-source>
    <properties>
      <property name="eclipselink.target-server" value="WebSphere_6_1"/>
      <property name="eclipselink.logging.level" value="FINEST"/>
      <property name="eclipselink.session-name" value="eclipselinkwls"/>
    </properties>
  </persistence-unit>
</persistence>

• RESOURCE_LOCAL : non-JTA : Put persistence.xml beside your JPA entities in yourProjectEJB/ejbModule/META-INF
• This one is used by a local SE Java app to create and pre-populated the derby database

  <persistence-unit name="stat.create.tables" transaction-type="RESOURCE_LOCAL">
    <provider>org.eclipse.persistence.jpa.PersistenceProvider</provider>
    <class>entity..</class>
    <properties>
      <property name="eclipselink.jdbc.platform" value="oracle.toplink.platform.database.DerbyPlatform"/>
      <property name="eclipselink.jdbc.driver" value="org.apache.derby.jdbc.EmbeddedDriver"/>
      <property name="eclipselink.target-database" value="Derby"/>            
      <property name="eclipselink.jdbc.url" value="jdbc:derby:C:/opt/derby104/unified;create=true"/>
      <property name="eclipselink.jdbc.user" value="APP"/>
      <property name="eclipselink.jdbc.password" value="APP"/>
      <property name="eclipselink.logging.level" value="FINEST"/>            
      <property name="eclipselink.ddl-generation" value="drop-and-create-tables"/>
      <property name="eclipselink.ddl-generation.output-mode" value="database"/>
    </properties>
  </persistence-unit>

References

• See Developing JPA Projects in the EclipseLink User's Guide.

Originated on build 20080918 - Michael O'Brien