Enterprise Application Project

An enterprise application project houses the resources required to deploy a J2EE enterprise application.

An enterprise application project contains a set of references to other J2EE modules and Java projects that compose an enterprise archive (EAR) file. These projects can be Web modules, EJB modules, application client modules, connector modules, general utility JAR files, or EJB client JAR files. Enterprise application projects include a deployment descriptor, as well as files that are common to all J2EE modules defined in the deployment descriptor.

When you create a J2EE module project, you can associate it with an enterprise application project. The project wizard allows you to specify a new or existing enterprise application project. Enterprise application projects are exported as EAR files that include all the files defined in the enterprise application project, as well as the appropriate archive file for each J2EE module or utility JAR project defined in the deployment descriptor, such as Web archive (WAR) files and Java archive (JAR) files.

An enterprise application project can also contain utility JAR files that are used by the contained modules, and enable the sharing of code at the application level by multiple Web, EJB, or applications. The utility JAR files defined for an enterprise application project can be actual JAR files in the project. Additionally, you can include utility Java projects that are designated to become the utility JAR files during development and deployment.

Several key files are created when you create an enterprise application project.

Table 1. Enterprise application project files
File	Description
META-INF/application.xml	Provides a deployment descriptor for the enterprise application (as defined in the J2EE specification) that is responsible for associating J2EE modules to a specific EAR file.
.settings/.component	Matches the location of each module's source code to the location of the module at deployment and lists its source and deployment paths for each module included with the EAR file.
.settings/org.eclipse.wst.common.project.facet.core.xml	Lists the facets of the enterprise application project.
.project	Serves as the project description file.

Note: Since no source code is built directly into an enterprise application, these projects are not Java projects, and they are not compiled by the Java builder.

Dynamic Web Project
A Dynamic Web project contains Web application resources that are dynamic elements, such as JavaServer Page files or servlets.
EJB Project
Create an EJB project to organize the resources contained in an EJB module.
Connector Project
Create a connector project that contains your standalone connector modules or is part of an enterprise application project.
Application Client Project
An application client is a standalone Java application that uses the EJB client interface to invoke components on a server (target runtime) and is run by the server's application client container.