I have a very, very strange situation happening on our Java EE app running on WebSphere.
EAR
--someJar.jar
----config/propfile.properties
--WAR
----WEB-INF
------classes
--------config/propfile.properties
When the application start up, ResourceBundle.getBundle("config/propfile.properties") seems to read someProperty from the WAR/WEB-INF/classes/config/propfile.properties.
However, after the app is up and running, ResourceBundle.getBundle("config/propfile.properties") seems to read someProperty from someJar.jar/config/propfile.properties instead.
I think that's how it's happening is because we have different values for someProperty on each file, and we got some error (due to the incorrect value from the someJar.jar/config/propfile.properties). According to Java EE spec, WEB-INF/classes should get loaded first before anything else?
Is it even possible? We could not replicate the problem in any of our lower environments.
The WAR/META-INF/MANIFEST.MF is ...Class-Path: lib/begin...lib/end someJar.jar
If the second call to ResourceBundle.getBundle("config/propfile.properties") is from a class in the ejb module, it would no have access to WAR/WEB-INF/classes/config/propfile.properties. This is because each module has a different class loader.
Download the ee spec at the following link (or the corresponding spec for your javaee standard).
http://download.oracle.com/otndocs/jcp/javaee-6.0-fr-eval-oth-JSpec/
In this version the relevant section is EE.8.3