About component pre-processing in WAS 7

WAS does not support the hot deployment of components. However, the Studio deployment code must update plugins by adding necessary libraries and configuration files.

For example, the portlet deployment code adds the following important piece of configuration to a portlet component's web.xml file:

<context-param>
  <param-name>com.ibm.websphere.portletcontainer.PortletDeploymentEnabled</param-name>
  <param-value>false</param-value>
</context-param>

This context parameter is important for WAS deployment, as it ensures that WAS's portal server does not attempt to load the new portlet, and instead allows Studio to load the newly deployed portlet.

For this reason, components must be pre-processed before they are deployed to WAS. You upload your .war files to the Studio deploy directory so that the deployer can find and process them.