You can deploy an ABL application as one or more OpenEdge ABL web applications. One OpenEdge ABL web application is packaged as one Web Application Archive (.war) file that follows the layout outlined previously (see ABL application structure). For improved performance and resource consumption, deploy an ABL application using a single OpenEdge ABL web application—making the full application accessible from a single server URL. There are situations where deploying an ABL application as multiple OpenEdge ABL web applications (where the application is accessible across multiple server URLs) is the correct path to follow. Because using multiple OpenEdge ABL web applications slows performance and consumes more OS process resources, use this approach only when:

  • Your OpenEdge ABL web application is designed as a set of discrete, individually deployed, services, where the OpenEdge ABL web application encapsulates "service set" within your ABL application.
  • You must avoid interrupting classic AppServer clients until they can be upgraded to use a single URL.

When deploying OpenEdge ABL web applications, you can pre-deploy and configure SOAP, REST, and Spring Security. You also have the option to deploy the SOAP, REST, WEB, and APSV service interface API's .p and .r files as part of each web application's WEB-INF/openedge directories. Using the optional embedding of .r and .p modules in the web application, you ensure that the version of the SOAP, REST, WEB, and APSV service interfaces remains consistent with their transport (URI) definitions. You may need to change the ABL application's PROPATH to include the OpenEdge ABL web application's WEB-INF/openedge path.