There are various ways to deploy an application to a WebSphere Application Server (JVM).

• IBM WebSphere - Deploy application using WebSphere admin console
• IBM WebSphere - Deploy application using monitoredDeployableApps directory (properties file)
• IBM WebSphere - Deploy application using monitoredDeployableApps directory (EAR WAR JAR SAR)
• IBM WebSphere - Deploy application using Apache Ant (ws_ant) (this article)

Apache Ant is a tool that can be used to compile, package, and deploy (or remove) an application in WebSphere. In this way, instead of deploying a EAR, WAR, JAR or SAR using the WebSphere admin console or instead of deploying an app using monitoredDeployableApps, you could use Apache Ant to deploy or remove an application from WebSphere. Apache Ant can also restart a JVM.

When WebSphere is install, the Apache Ant command line tool will be included. The tool is located in the was_install_root/bin/ directory, and is named ws_ant.bat (Windows) or ws_ant.sh (Linux). The Apache Ant tool reads an XML file to know what to do.

./ws_ant.sh -f example.xml