Shared libraries are files used by multiple applications. Each shared library consists of a symbolic name, a Java class path, and a native path for loading Java Native Interface (JNI) libraries. You can use shared libraries to reduce the number of duplicate library files on your system.
Isolated shared libraries provide another way to reduce the number of library files. Isolated shared libraries each have their own class loader, enabling a single instance of the classes to be shared across the applications. Each application can specify which isolated shared libraries that it wants to reference. Different applications can reference different versions of the isolated shared library, resulting in a set of applications sharing an isolated shared library. With isolated shared libraries, some applications can share a single copy of Library A, Version 1 while other applications share a single copy of Library A, Version 2, for a total of two instances in memory.
Using the administrative console, you can define shared libraries for the library files that multiple applications use and then associate the libraries with specific applications or modules or with an application server. Guidelines for associating shared libraries are as follows:
Instead of using the administrative console to associate a shared library with an application, you can use an installed optional package. You associate a shared library to an application by declaring the dependent library .jar file in the MANIFEST.MF file of the application. Refer to the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) 1.4 specification, section 8.2 for an example.
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