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<title>EJB 2.x architecture</title>
<shortdesc>This topic provides a high-level overview of the distributed component
architecture defined in the Sun Microsystems Enterprise <tm tmclass="special"
tmowner="Sun Microsystems, Inc." tmtype="tm" trademark="JavaBeans">JavaBeans</tm> (EJB)
version 2.x architecture specification.</shortdesc>
<prolog><metadata>
<keywords><indexterm>architecture<indexterm>EJB 2.x</indexterm></indexterm>
<indexterm>EJB<indexterm>architecture<indexterm>2.x</indexterm></indexterm></indexterm>
</keywords>
</metadata></prolog>
<conbody>
<p>The complete Enterprise <tm tmclass="special" tmowner="Sun Microsystems, Inc."
tmtype="tm" trademark="JavaBeans">JavaBeans</tm> specifications and descriptions
of the technology are available from the <xref format="html" href="http://java.sun.com/products/ejb/docs.html#specs"
scope="external">java.sun.com<desc></desc></xref> Web site.</p>
<p>Enterprise beans provide several benefits for application developers. They
do the following: </p>
<ul>
<li>Allow you to build distributed applications by combining components developed
using tools from different vendors. </li>
<li>Make it easy to write applications. You do not have to deal with low-level
details of transaction and state management, multithreading, resource pooling,
and other complex low-level APIs. However, if necessary, expert programmers
can still gain direct access to the low-level APIs.</li>
<li>Are developed once and then deployed on multiple platforms without recompilation
or source code modification. </li>
<li>Offer compatibility between the EJB specification that governs the use
of enterprise beans and other <tm tmclass="special" tmowner="Sun Microsystems, Inc."
tmtype="tm" trademark="Java">Java</tm> APIs and CORBA. This also provides
for interoperability between enterprise beans and non-Java applications.</li>
</ul>
<dl><dlentry>
<dt><b>Enterprise beans</b></dt>
<dd>An enterprise bean is a non-visual component of a distributed, transaction-oriented
enterprise application. Enterprise beans are typically deployed in EJB containers
and run on EJB servers. You can customize them by changing their deployment
descriptors and you can assemble them with other beans to create new applications.
There are three types of enterprise beans: session beans, entity beans, and
message-driven beans. Session beans and message-driven beans are coarse-grained
components designed to model business process while entity beans are used
to model fine-grained data objects.<p> <ul>
<li><b>Session beans</b>: Session beans are non-persistent enterprise beans.
They can be stateful or stateless.<ul>
<li><b>Stateful session beans</b>:  Act on behalf of a single client and maintain
client-specific session information (called conversational state) across multiple
method calls and transactions. They exist for the duration of a single client/server
session.</li>
<li><b>Stateless session beans</b>: Do not maintain any conversational state
and are pooled by their container to handle multiple requests from multiple
clients.</li>
</ul></li>
<li><b>Entity beans</b>: Entity beans are enterprise beans that contain persistent
data and that can be saved in various persistent data stores. Each entity
bean carries its own identity. Entity beans that manage their own persistence
are called bean-managed persistence (BMP) entity beans. Entity beans that
delegate their persistence to their EJB container are called container-managed
persistence (CMP) entity beans.</li>
<li><b>Message-driven beans</b>: Message-driven beans are enterprise beans
that receive and process JMS messages. Unlike session or entity beans, message-driven
beans have no interfaces. They can be accessed only through messaging and
they do not maintain any conversational state.  Message-driven beans allow
asynchronous communication between the queue and the listener, and provide
separation between message processing and business logic.</li>
</ul></p></dd>
</dlentry></dl>
<dl><dlentry>
<dt><b>Remote client view</b></dt>
<dd>The remote client view specification became available beginning with EJB
1.1. The remote client view of an enterprise bean is location independent.
A client running in the same JVM as a bean instance uses the same API to access
the bean as a client running in a different JVM on the same or different machine.
The remote client view consists of two interfaces<ul>
<li><b>Remote interface</b>: The remote interface specifies the remote business
methods that a client can call on an enterprise bean.</li>
<li><b>Remote home interface</b>: The remote home interface specifies the
methods used by remote clients for locating, creating, and removing instances
of enterprise bean classes.</li>
</ul></dd>
</dlentry></dl>
<dl><dlentry>
<dt><b>Local client view</b></dt>
<dd>The local client view specification is available in EJB 2.0 or later.
Unlike the remote client view, the local client view of a bean is location
dependent. Local client view access to an enterprise bean requires both the
local client and the enterprise bean that provides the local client view to
be in the same JVM. The local client view therefore does not provide the location
transparency provided by the remote client view. Local interfaces and local
home interfaces provide support for lightweight access from enterprise beans
that are local clients. Session and entity beans can be tightly coupled with
their clients, allowing access without the overhead typically associated with
remote method calls. The local client view consists of two interfaces:<ul>
<li><b>Local interface</b>: The local interface is a lightweight version of
the remote interface, but for local clients. It includes business logic methods
that can be called by a local client.</li>
<li><b>Local home interface</b>: The local home interface specifies the methods
used by local clients for locating, creating, and removing instances of enterprise
bean classes.</li>
</ul></dd>
</dlentry><dlentry>
<dt><b>Web service client view</b></dt>
<dd>In the EJB 2.1 specification, the EJB architecture introduced the support
for Web services. A client for a session bean can be a Web service client.
A Web service client can make use of the Web service client view of a stateless
session bean, which has a corresponding service endpoint interface.<dl><dlentry>
<dt><b>Service endpoint interface</b></dt>
<dd>The service endpoint interface for a stateless session bean exposes the
functionality of the session bean as a Web service endpoint. The Web Service
Description Language (WSDL) document for a Web service describes the Web service
as a set of endpoints operating on messages. A WSDL document can include the
service endpoint interface of a stateless session bean as one of its endpoints.
An existing stateless session bean can be modified to include a Web service
client view, or a service endpoint interface can be mapped from an existing
WSDL to provide the correct interface.<p>A Web service client view is independent
of location and can be accessed through remote calls.</p></dd>
</dlentry></dl></dd>
</dlentry></dl>
<dl><dlentry>
<dt><b>EJB client JAR file</b></dt>
<dd>An EJB client JAR file is an optional JAR file that can contain the client
interfaces that a client program needs to use and the client views of the
enterprise beans that are contained in the EJB JAR file. If you decide not
to create an EJB client JAR file for an EJB module, all of the client interface
classes will be in the EJB JAR file. By default, the workbench creates EJB
client JAR projects for each corresponding EJB project.</dd>
</dlentry></dl>
<dl><dlentry>
<dt><b>EJB container</b></dt>
<dd>An EJB container is a runtime environment that manages one or more enterprise
beans. The EJB container manages the life cycles of enterprise bean objects,
coordinates distributed transactions, and implements object security. Generally,
each EJB container is provided by an EJB server and contains a set of enterprise
beans that run on the server.</dd>
</dlentry><dlentry>
<dt><b>Deployment descriptor</b></dt>
<dd>A deployment descriptor is an XML file packaged with the enterprise beans
in an EJB JAR file or an EAR file. It contains metadata describing the contents
and structure of the enterprise beans, and runtime transaction and security
information for the EJB container.</dd>
</dlentry><dlentry>
<dt><b>EJB server</b></dt>
<dd>An EJB server is a high-level process or application that provides a runtime
environment to support the execution of server applications that use enterprise
beans. An EJB server provides a JNDI-accessible naming service, manages and
coordinates the allocation of resources to client applications, provides access
to system resources, and provides a transaction service. An EJB server could
be provided by, for example, a database or application server.</dd>
</dlentry></dl>
</conbody>
</concept>