Deployment fails with "WSWS7011E, The configuration for the Stores.war application module cannot load correctly" message

When you review the SystemOut.log after the failed deployment you see error messages similar to the following example:

[3/28/12 16:55:35:722 IST] 0000004d wtp ? ? ? ? ? E org.eclipse.jst.j2ee.commonarchivecore.internal.impl.WARFileImpl getDeploymentDescriptor An error occurred while processing the deployment descriptor error message=EMF2DOMAdapterImpl_ERROR_0
[3/28/12 16:55:35:729 IST] 0000004d WSModuleDescr E ? WSWS7011E: The configuration for the Stores.war application module cannot load correctly.
The following error occurred: ?org.eclipse.jst.j2ee.commonarchivecore.internal.exception.DeploymentDescriptorLoadException: WEB-INF/web.xml
Stack trace of nested exception:
java.lang.IllegalStateException: EMF2DOMAdapterImpl_ERROR_0
at org.eclipse.wst.common.internal.emf.resource.EMF2DOMAdapterImpl.handleInvalidMultiNodes(EMF2DOMAdapterImpl.java:1381)
at org.eclipse.wst.common.internal.emf.resource.EMF2DOMAdapterImpl.findDOMNode(EMF2DOMAdapterImpl.java:1368)
at org.eclipse.wst.common.internal.emf.resource.EMF2DOMAdapterImpl.primUpdateMOFFeature(EMF2DOMAdapterImpl.java:1538)
at org.eclipse.wst.common.internal.emf.resource.EMF2DOMAdapterImpl.updateMOFFeature(EMF2DOMAdapterImpl.java:1958)
at org.eclipse.wst.common.internal.emf.resource.EMF2DOMAdapterImpl.primUpdateMOF(EMF2DOMAdapterImpl.java:1005)
at org.eclipse.wst.common.internal.emf.resource.EMF2DOMAdapterImpl.updateMOF(EMF2DOMAdapterImpl.java:981)
at org.eclipse.wst.common.internal.emf.resource.EMF2DOMAdapterImpl.primUpdateMOFMultiFeature(EMF2DOMAdapterImpl.java:484)
...
...
[3/28/12 16:55:56:434 IST] 0000004d wtp ? ? ? ? ? E org.eclipse.jst.j2ee.commonarchivecore.internal.impl.WARFileImpl getDeploymentDescriptor An error occurred while processing the deployment descriptor error message=EMF2DOMAdapterImpl_ERROR_0
[3/28/12 16:55:56:435 IST] 0000004d wtp ? ? ? ? ? E org.eclipse.jst.j2ee.commonarchivecore.internal.impl.EARFileImpl rollUpRoles An error occurred while processing the roles in module
? ? Web Module ? ? ? ?[ org.eclipse.jst.j2ee.application.internal.impl.WebModuleImpl@32953295 ]
? ? URI ? ? ? ? ? ? ? [ Stores.war ]
? ? Alt DD ? ? ? ? ? ?[ null ]
? ? Context Root ? ? ?[ /webapp/wcs/stores ]
?for application /opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer70/profiles/demo/wstemp/0/workspace/cells/democell/applications/WC_demo.ear/deployments/WC_demo error message=WEB-INF/web.xml

This problem is caused by a malformed web.xml file as mentioned in the error message. Specifically the web.xml contains a duplicate node that cannot be correctly parsed.

Carefully review the web.xml for the module mentioned in the error message and look for multiple instances of elements. Review the XSD for the file and validate that the web.xml meets the definition.

For example the web.xml should not contain multiple session-config welcome-file-list jsp-config login-config or locale-encoding-mapping-list nodes.