Chapter 21. Enterprise JavaBeans

Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) 3.1 is an API for developing distributed, transactional, secure and portable Java EE applications through the use of server-side components called Enterprise Beans. Enterprise Beans implement the business logic of an application in a decoupled manner that encourages reuse. Enterprise JavaBeans 3.1 is documented as the Java EE specification JSR-318.

JBoss EAP 6 has full support for applications built using the Enterprise JavaBeans 3.1 specification.

JBoss administrators have many configuration options available to them to control the performance of Enterprise Beans in JBoss EAP 6. These options can be accessed using the Management Console or the command line configuration tool. Editing the XML server configuration file to apply changes is also possible but not recommended.

The EJB configuration options are located in slightly different places in the Management Console depending on how the server is being run.

Enterprise beans are server-side application components as defined in the Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) 3.1 specification, JSR-318. Enterprise beans are designed for the implementation of application business logic in a decoupled manner to encourage reuse.

Enterprise beans are written as Java classes and annotated with the appropriate EJB annotations. They can be deployed to the application server in their own archive (a JAR file) or be deployed as part of a Java EE application. The application server manages the lifecycle of each enterprise bean and provides services to them such as security, transactions, and concurrency management.

An enterprise bean can also define any number of business interfaces. Business interfaces provide greater control over which of the bean's methods are available to clients and can also allow access to clients running in remote JVMs.

There are three types of Enterprise Bean: Session beans, Message-driven beans and Entity beans.

Session Beans are Enterprise Beans that encapsulate a set of related business processes or tasks and are injected into the classes that request them. There are three types of session bean: stateless, stateful, and singleton.

Message-driven Beans (MDBs) provide an event driven model for application development. The methods of MDBs are not injected into or invoked from client code but are triggered by the receipt of messages from a messaging service such as a Java Messaging Service (JMS) server. The Java EE 6 specification requires that JMS is supported but other messaging systems can be supported as well.