war-filedeployment

An answer to a question I read today suggested deploying an application as an exploded (unzipped) WAR . It got me thinking. Every deployment I've ever done to a JBoss/Tomcat has been with a a WAR/ EAR file. At least as far as I can remember. Have I been making a mistake all these years? Are there advantages to deploying an app in its expanded form rather than packaged up? I think that was my answer mentioning the exploded WAR in the other question. Exploded WARs are easier to navigate and you can deploy 'parts' of your application that much quicker (depending on how our Web/App server deals

I have multiple web-apps running on an app server and each web-app WAR file contains a copy of the same jar file. Does this mean that a class in that jar file will be loaded multiple times in the JVM, once for each WAR file it exists in? Following on from that, if I have a static synchronized method in such a class, is it only synchronized among threads within the web-app it exists in but not synchronized against the same method in the same class in a different jar file in a different WAR file? (Hope the question makes sense, will clarify if necessary). If this is the case I presume the best