BIRT 3.7 Viewer - deployment with shared library configuration

jnazario

Hi all,<br />
<br />
I am pretty noob to Birt (v3.7) and Websphere (v8.0) which are the technologies used by the project.<br />
<br />
<strong class='bbc'>To summarize, my question is:</strong><br />
Is there any problem with distributing my BIRT Viewer reports solution (.EAR) with Birt libraries configure as shared in Websphere (instead of having them at WEB-INF/lib)? Or is there a better way to achieve my needs?<br />
<br />
<strong class='bbc'>To follow is the explanation of what is going on....</strong><br />
For the project solution we have two "products" / "applications" which are develop independent. One part hosts the Webservices and core business functionality, the other part is the Birt Reporting<br />
<br />
Focusing in the Birt reporting part, the reports will use WebServices as the data source. In the topology, we have different environments: DEV, QA, UAT, and PROD each with it own base URL for the web services. (Any tips on how to avoid changing the connection profile string manually for the base url?)<br />
<br />
Currently the report designs are part of the BIRT solution, but the .EAR file with embedded Birt libraries was becoming a transfer issue for how quick we need to do changes and deploy. So I move the WEB-INF/lib to be part of WebSphere shared libraries and change the class loading settings to:<br />
- EAR: Classloader mode: PARENT_LAST<br />
- EAR: WAR classloader policy: APPLICATION<br />
- WAR: Classloader mode: PARENT_FIRST<br />
<br />
<br />
Birt Viewer works fine like this, <strong class='bbc'>but I haven't tested in a real clustered environment yet...</strong><br />
<br />
I guess I am more looking for advise, as this might not be a straight / simple problem. Hopefully I am mistaken.<br />
<br />
Thanks