IBM Worklight - Can Worklight be deployed to an existing WAS server?

Question

Can a Worklight Server be deployed to a WebSphere application server which also runs other non-Worklight .ear applications? Or does Worklight need its own separate instance of WAS?

Answer 1

Just like you can deploy multiple instances of Worklight (v6 and above) projects - multiple .war files to the same WAS application server, there should not be issues to deploy it to an application server running other services.

That said, possible issues to consider:

1. When deploying a Worklight project, you will want to enable "application security" (in the WAS admin console, Security > Global Security). If there are some other web applications for which application security is undesired, you need a different WAS server instance.

   • Setting up, enabling and migrating security
     
     

2. The list of users that can use the web applications are configured through LDAP or "federated repositories", or similar. If, for Worklight, you need to use a completely different set of user logins than for the other web applications, then you need to use multiple "security domains".

   • Configuring multiple security domains
     
     

3. The machine hosting the application server will probably need memory upgrades...

   • Deploying the Enterprise Archive (EAR) Using the WebSphere Admin Console
     
     

4. Probably also need to make clear seperation where required:

   • IBM WebSphere Developer Technical Journal: Co-hosting multiple versions of J2EE applications

Answer 2

Worklight is itself an application running inside a web container, whether that be Tomcat, WAS Liberty, or full WAS. It's essentially a layer running underneath the container to handle requests for Worklight applications, fielding their context root requests. If you create the WAR file for your Worklight app and extract out the deployment descriptor you'll find all the necessary filters and listeners that most other apps would have.

Things like adapters and wlapps are "installed" to this underlying layer, and are merely extracted and stored as whatever was packaged with them, such as the JS and CSS you used to make you app. In fact, with a standard Liberty install you can typically find your adapters in plain sight at (for the WL5.0.6 instance I have handy, it's different for WL6): /opt/IBM/Worklight/server/wlp/usr/servers/worklightServer/worklight.home/worklight/data/export/adapters

So, in addition to what Idan has said, I also present you with the following docs (assuming WL6)

Overview of the Worklight Server installation process

Given my own experience, you should be perfectly able to install other EAR and WAR files to your existing WAS instance, just make sure your context roots are unique, as always ;)

I also second the memory considerations.