WebLogic 5.1 SP8 & DatabaseServlet.pathname() behavior

["Randall, Craig" <Cr...@documentum.com>]

My experience with WLS 5.1 SP8 is that WLS chooses to return null from
getServletContext().getRealPath("/"), which according to the J2EE API
documentation, it is entitled to do:

"The real path returned will be in a form appropriate to the computer and
operating system on which the servlet container is running, including the
proper path separators. This method returns null if the servlet container
cannot translate the virtual path to a real path for any reason (such as
when the content is being made available from a .war archive)."

I see in (org.apache.struts.example.)DatabaseServlet.java that its private
pathname() method makes such a call. That is, it seems (based on my WLS
experience) that the pathname() implementation:

    /**
     * Return the pathname of our persistent storage file.
     */
    private String pathname() {

	if (this.pathname != null)
	    return (this.pathname);
	else
	    return (getServletContext().getRealPath("/") +
	            "/WEB-INF/database.xml");
    }

will likely return "/WEB-INF/database.xml. How is this acceptable when the
root name of the web (e.g. struts-example) is missing from the URI? Can WLS
be configured to allow this URI to work? Is there an issue here in the
Struts example that needs to be fixed for app servers that behave like WLS
5.1?

Thanks in advance for any help on this.

-Craig