I'll ask one more question - hopefully the last one. Let's assume that I have a WAR file that needs that service to be up. I know that I can programatically add "dependecies" towards WAR depolyment. So far so good.
My question is: does the AS postpone the WAR file deployment until the service completes OR it will deploy it and then the WAR file will miss-behave (meaning throwing some kind of exceptions due to lack of access to the "late" service) ?
And I think I am going over the full exercice :) of understanding how AS works on that level. Thanks!
It depends on what service you attach the dependency to. If you stick it on one of the deployment phase services, you will prevent deployment from completing. If you attach it to one of the services that executes the deployment (like for example a service that represntes some EE component) then only that service and anything depending on the service will not start.
In all cases, if a service that was created during deployment was not started, the container will abort and rollback the deployment. That is unless the deployment operation uses a special option in the management request that tells it to allow incomplete deployments to survive.