Best alternative to Weblogic startup classes in Websphere?

Question

I am working on a Server Migration Project from Weblogic to Websphere. The problem is that in Weblogic, we are already using a class specified as Startup-class in Weblogic (and arguments to the class like log4j config file) which is present in a jar which is added to Weblogic classpath by editing the startup script. This jar initializes a global log4j file which is for all the apps deployed on the server and not for any particular app. Each app is distinguished by a category of log4j.

Now I could not find a similar thing in Websphere. So what is the best solution? I can create a new application which would do all initializations like that of the startup classes. I thought of using startup-beans but read in some IBM documentation that they are deprecated due to EJB 3.1 Session Beans. Also how to make sure this app loads first? By giving Websphere xml file startup weight 1 like here?

I am using Weblogic 6.3.2 and Websphere 8.5

Answer 1

It sounds like custom services (or a custom feature on Liberty profile) are the best analog if you need to run logic during server startup. Otherwise, if you just need to add a library to every application, then create a shared library and then either associate it with the server or associate it with specific applications or modules.

Answer 2

The WebSphere migration toolkit suggests to replace the WebLogic T3StartupDef and T3ShutdownDef implementations with either a ServletContextListener implementation, session startup bean (Singleton), or a servlet that is configured to load at startup time. If you haven't used the WebLogic to WebSphere migration toolkit, check it out. It provides a lot of help especially with deployment descriptor extensions.

The @Singleton session bean in EJB 3.1 replaces the proprietary WebSphere startup bean.

The best approach depends on the type of module you need the startup logic.

If you are considering the custom services option, note that the com.ibm.websphere.runtime package is not available in Liberty if you are considering the Liberty server.