Troubleshooting: WebSphere Commerce application fails to start due to incorrect settings after server deployment

After deploying your customization using the server deployment process with the Build and Deployment tool, the WebSphere Commerce application fails to start due to incorrect settings applied to the WebSphere Commerce Java EE modules. Examples of incorrect settings include data source JNDI names and virtual hosts.

Problem

After a server deployment, the server might fail with exceptions in the WebSphere Application Server SystemErr.log and SystemOut.log files. This might be caused by the inclusion of the out-of-the-box WebSphere Commerce Java EE modules that reside in the WC project in the development environment. If they are checked into the repository and are not excluded from the build source extraction or packaging, they will be included in the server deployment package. The server deployment process will subsequently include the Java EE modules in the partial application update. Since the Java EE modules already contain settings specific to the WebSphere Commerce Developer environment, the partial application update will subsequently overwrite the existing settings on the servers with the incorrect ones, resulting in application startup errors. You can validate whether this is the case by checking to see if the out-of-the-box WebSphere Commerce Java EE modules exist in the WCBD_deploy_server_dir/source/wc.ear directory.

Solution

Ensure that the WebSphere Commerce Java EE modules are not included as part of the server deployment. If they are included, you can either remove them from the repository, or exclude them from the build process. Refer to the WebSphere Commerce Build and Deployment tool repository structure topic for detail.