What is meant by Enterprise Java Beans (EJB) ?

Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) is a server side component architecture

that enables and simplifies the process of building enterprise class

distributed object applications in Java

 Software Components

• A software component is the code that implements a set of well

defined task

• Software Components can be used as puzzle pieces to solve large

problems

• A company can purchase a well defined module that solves a

problem and combine it with other components to solve larger

problems

• For example consider a software component that computes the price

of computer parts such as RAM and hard drives

 Software Components (contd.)
• The pricing component calculates the correct price based on a set of

pricing rules

• Base Price – of a single RAM or a single hard disk

• Quantity discounts – that a customer receives for ordering more than

10 RAM modules

• Bundling discounts – that the customer receives for ordering both

RAM and a hard disk

• Preferred customer discounts – that is given to big name customers

• Locale discounts – depending on where the customer lives

 Software Components (contd.)
• Overhead costs – such as shipping and taxes

• The pricing rules are not unique for ordering computer parts only

other industries can also use the same pricing functionality

• It will be a huge waste of resources if each company that need

complex pricing calculation to write its own sophisticated pricing

engine

• Vendors provide pricing components that can be reused over and

over again for different customers

• A developer can quickly assemble an application from prewritten

components rather than writing the entire application from scratch

 Component Architectures

• There are a number of tools that are available for developing

components like IBM’s VisualAge for Java, Symantec’s Visual Café

and Borland’s JBuilder

• The containers provide a runtime environment for the components to

play in and also provides a set of common services that

components will need

• The component vendors supply’s a set of tools to aid in the

deployment and maintenance of the components like

 JavaBeans and EJBs

• JavaBeans are development components and are not deployable

• JavaBeans is not deployable because JavaBeans is not a complete

application

• JavaBeans do not need a runtime environment in which to live

• JavaBeans can have a container or not

• EJBs are deployable components

• EJBs are complete applications

• EJBs need a runtime environment to live

• EJBs need a container

 Applets, Servlets and EJBs

• Applets can be deployed in a Webpage and the browser’s applet

viewer provides a runtime container for the applet

• Servlets can be deployed in a Web Server and the web server’s

servlet engine provides a runtime container for the servlet

• Enterprise Java Beans can be deployed in a Application Server and

the application server provides a runtime container for the

Enterprise Java Beans

• The difference between applets, servlets and enterprise java beans is

 Applets, Servlets and EJBs (contd.)

• Applets are portable java programs that can be downloaded and can

execute in an untrusting environment so that an applet can be

downloaded from a Web server into a Web browser deployed in a

Webpage and the browser’s applet

• Servlets are request/response oriented so that they take requests

from client such as Web browser and issue a response back to

that host

• Applets and Servlets are well suited to handle client side operations

performing presentation related logic and lightweight business

 Applets, Servlets and EJBs (contd.)

• Enterprise Java Beans are server side components that are meant to

perform server side operations such as executing complex

algorithms or performing high volume business transactions

• Server side components needs to run in a highly available, fault

tolerant, transactional and multiuser secure environment

• An application server provides highend server side environment for

the enterprise java beans and provides the runtime containment

necessary to manage enterprise java beans

 Multi-tier Architecture

• Any well written software deployment has a logical partitioning into

layers

• Each layer has a different responsibility in the overall deployment

• Within each layer there can be one or more components

• Each layer has a different responsibility in the overall deployment

• A layered system is a well designed system because each layer is

responsible for a separate task

Multi-tier Architecture (contd.)

Presentation layer

Business logic layer

Data layer
 Multi-tier Architecture (contd.)

• The presentation layer contains components dealing with user

interfaces and user interaction

• The presentation layer of a web based deployment could use java

servlets, Java server pages and Java applets

• The presentation layer contains components that work together to

solve business problems

• The components are written in a high level language like Java

• The data layer is used by the business logic layer to persist state

permanently
 Multi-tier Architecture (contd.)

• Central to the data layer is one or more database that house the

stored data

• The advantage of partitioning an application into logical layers is to

isolate each layer from the other so that it will be possible to plug

in a different view

• By introducing the layer partitioning it will be possible to plug in a

different set of business rules or to plug in a different database in

the data layer with relatively minor effects on other layers

 Multi-tier Architecture (contd.)
• The physical separation of the layers can be changed according to

the needs

• There is two tier architecture, three tier architecture and even n tier

architecture according to the use

• In a two tier architecture either the business logic is combined with

the presentation layer or the business logic is pushed into the

data layer

• There are many advantages in pushing business logic into the data

layer like saves many round trips, increases the speed of database
 Server Side Component Architecture Solutions

• As the multi tier server side deployments surfaced multitudes of

application servers have begun to appear on the market

• The application servers provide a usable runtime environment in

which components can execute and provide the needed services

• As a number of server side components appeared in the market the

need for a standard architecture for server side components has

arisen

• The standard architecture needs to craft a well formed interface

between the application server which contains the components

 Server Side Component Architecture Solutions (contd.)

• The most popular standards are

Sun Microsystem’s Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition (J2EE)

Microsoft’s Distributed InterNet Application Architecture and The

Object Management Group’s CORBA Standard

•The OMG’s Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) is

a specification and not a product

•The distinction between CORBA and J2EE is that CORBA has only
the

notion of an object and has no notion of deployable server side

 Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition (J2EE)

• EJB is an integral part of Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition

• Sun Microsystems first focused on building a robust Java

Development Kit (JDK) which became the de facto reference

implementation of the Java platform

• Sun Microsystems then recognized the power of Java on the server

and began to develop several Enterprise APIs that provided

enterprise level services for server side deployments

• These services served as great feedback to sun because they

highlighted many problems with the Enterprise APIs and that lead

to the development of Enterprise Java Beans

 Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition (contd.)

• J2EE takes Java’s Enterprise APIs and bundles them together in a

complete development platform for enterprise class server side

deployments in Java

• J2EE addresses all the problems raised by Sun’s Enterprise APIs like

poor synchrony between Enterprise APIs , no way to test

application server compatibility, no reference implementations

• J2EE provides a test suite for vendors to test their products and if
the
 The Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition (contd.)

Java Java Java Naming and Enterprise

Data Base Remote Directory Interface Java Beans
Connectivity Method
Invocation

Java
Transaction Java Server
API and Pages
Java 2
Java
Enterprise
Transaction
Edition
Service Servlet

Java Mail

Java EXtended
MessagingS Markup
Java IDL Connectors ervice Language
 Java Remote Method Invocation (JRMI)

• RMI is a mechanism for invoking methods remotely on other machine

• JRMI is seamless so that a user will not know that he is using RMI

when programming a distributed application

• JRMI abstracts networking issues from the user such as marshalling

parameters, handling machine byte order which are all necessary

for network communications

• JRMI also contains other functions like automatic activation of

remote objects and a distributed garbage collector to clean up

unused remote objects

 Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI)

• EJB relies on JNDI for looking up distributed components across the

network

• JNDI controls the directory service that stores information about

where resources reside and other information such as user name

and passwords

• In EJB when client code requests access to a component, directory

services are used to locate and retrieve a component to service

that client

• There are many types of directory services and is a big problem in

switching to different directory services and JNDI solves the

 Java Database Connectivity (JDBC)

• JDBC is a standard Java extension for data accessRMI is a

mechanism for invoking methods remotely on other machine

• Using JDBC programmers can represent database connections,

issue SQL statements, process database results in a relatively

portable way

• JDBC is similar to Open Database Connectivity standard and the two

are interoperable through JDBC-ODBC bridge

• JDBC contains built in support for database connection pooling

Java Transaction API (JTA) and Java Transaction Service (JTS)

• A transaction is a unit of work that makes a set of guarantee about its

execution

• Any code executing within the scope of a transaction is guaranteed

either to all be executed or not to execute at all

• Transactions allow for multiple users to be modifying the same data

yet each to be isolated from one another

• JTA is a high level transaction interface that is used to control

transactions
Java Transaction API and Java Transaction Service (contd.)

• JTS is a set of low level transaction interfaces that is used behind

the scenes and the client code do not directly interact with JTS

• JTS makes it possible for multiple vendors to collaborate when

performing in a distributed heterogeneous environment

• Enterprise Java Beans strictly depends on JTA but it does not

depend on JTS
 Java Messaging Service (JMS)

• A messaging service allows for distributed objects to communicate

in an asynchronous reliable manner

• Processes can respond to messages at their leisure and they could

potentially be offline when a message is initially sent

• Java Messaging Service can be used as a portable messaging

service
 Java Servlets
• Servlets are networked components that can be used to extend the

functionality of a Web server

• Servlets are request response oriented in that they take from client

host and issue a response back to that host

• Servlets differ from EJB components is that the server side

component features that EJB offers is not readily available to

servlets

• Servlets are suitable to handle simple request response needs and

they do not require sophisticated management by an application

server
 Java Server Pages (JSP)

• Java Server Pages are very similar to servlets and JSP scripts are

compiled into servlets

• JSP scripts are not pure Java code but more centered around look

and feel issues

• JSP can be easily written and maintained by non Java programmers

• JSP do not require a Java compiler

 Java IDL

• Java IDL is an implementation of the CORBA specification in Java

and it allows for connectivity and interoperability with

heterogeneous objects

• CORBA is a cross platform architecture

• CORBA is language independent and it does not matter what the

programming language is as long as CORBA supports the

language in which the program is developed

• Java IDL is one specific implementation of CORBA among many

such
 JavaMail

• JavaMail API allows applications to use E-mail capabilities

• JavaMail defines a set of interfaces to which the application code is

written and those interfaces shield the code from specific

protocols or mail service implementations used

• The Internet mail code becomes portable across platforms as well as

across mail protocols

• JavaMail depends on the JavaBeans Activation Framework (JAF) to

encapsulate message data and to handle interactions with that

data
 Connectors

• A connector is a vendor specific bridge that links an existing system

to the Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition

• The existing system could be ERP systems, mainframe systems such

as IBM’s CICS or existing legacy databases

• Connectors are useful because they will take care of navigations to

existing systems, handling transaction and security concerns

• The connectors are different from the other J2EE APIs because

connectors are very vendor specific

 The Six Parties

• EJB partitions the responsibility of an EJB development to six

different parties and they are

• The Bean Provider

• The Container Provider

• The Server Provider

• The application assembler

• The deployer

• The System Administrator

 The Bean Provider

• The Bean Provider is the party who supplies enterprise beans

components having methods for performing application logic

• The Bean Provider is a vendor of components

• The Bean should be designed correctly to be reusable considering

the different applications, domains and users of the Bean

• Developing a reusable bean will require many iterations depending

on the feedback from the customers using the Bean

• Bean reusability fall into three different levels

 The Bean Provider (contd.)
• Reuse as given

• The application assembler uses the bean as it is to build an

application

• The Bean functionality cannot be tailored to fit the application

• Reuse by customization

• The application assembler configures the bean by modifying the

bean properties to fit the specific needs of the application

• Reuse by extension (subclass)

• The application assembler creates custom application specific bean

by subclassing the prebuilt acquired beans

 The Bean Provider (contd.)
• Reuse by extension is more powerful but difficult to achieve and is

only provided by very few providers

• The more reusability a bean provides the more useful a bean is

• Enterprise beans can range in size and scope like smaller grained

enterprise beans which are very concrete with limited scope and

duties and larger grained enterprise beans

•A bean can be a client of another bean eg. Credit card transaction

Client Bean Server Bean

for credit card for processing Verifier Bean
scanner transactions
 The Container Provider

• The EJB container provides a playground for the enterprise java

Beans to run

• There can be many Beans running with in a container

• Bean containers are responsible for managing the beans running

within them

• The Container interact with the beans by calling a few required

methods that the bean must expose

• The Containers can also provide access to legacy systems

 The Server Provider

• An application server provides services for the application such as

transaction services, security services etc.

• The services are needed for the application to be scalable, robust

and

secure for multiple concurrent users

• The EJB server provides a runtime environment for one or more

containers

• EJB servers manage low level system resources allocating resources

The relationship between EJB servers and EJB containers

EJB Server

EJB Container 1 EJB Container 2

Enterprise
Enterprise
Java Bean3
Java Bean1

Enterprise Enterprise
Java Bean2 Java Bean4
 EJB Server and container responsibilities
• The Servers and containers provide both implicit services and

explicit services

• The implicit services include

• Implicit distributed transaction management

• Implicit security

• Implicit resource management and component life cycle

• Implicit persistence

• Implicit remote accessibility

• Implicit multiclient support

• Implicit component location transparency

 EJB Server and container responsibilities (contd.)

• The explicit services include

• Naming and directory service – allowing components to be located

across the network

• A set of deployment tools – that allows the EJB deployer to deploy

components into the EJB server and customize the components

as needed

• Intelligent load balancing

• Server clustering

• Connectors to legacy systems like SAP

 The Application Assembler

• The application assembler assembles the reusable deployable

server side components to solve a business problem

• The application assembler can be a staff or an outside consultant

who understands the complete application system and know how

the various components fit together

• The tasks that an application assembler should perform are

7. Write the code that calls on components purchased from vendors

8. Provide a workflow solution between a number of disparate

components mapping between them

 The Application Assembler (contd.)

3. Supply an user interface if needed ( using JSP or servlets )

4. Write new enterprise beans to solve domain specific problems eg.

Business entity that is specific for a particular business

• The application assembler should be involved in the design and

implementation of logic residing in several tiers in a multi tier

architecture
 The EJB Deployer

• The application assembler may not be familiar with the specific

operational environment that the application must run in

• The EJB deployers are aware of specific operational environment and

know how to deploy beans within servers and how to customize

the beans for a specific environment

• The EJB deployer has knowledge of a customer’s existing naming

and directory services and understands how to customize

enterprise Beans for that scenario

• Another function of EJB deployer is mapping security settings

 The EJB Deployer (contd.)

• The Business stores the list of their employees and their security

levels in some directory service structure and the EJB deployer

must adapt the access level of the beans to fit the particular

environment

• The EJB deployers must be aware of the differences between the

various beans, servers and containers available in the market

• The EJB deployer can be also a staff or an outside consultant

 The System Administrator

• The system administrator is responsible for the upkeep and

monitoring of the deployed system and make use of runtime

monitoring and management tools that the EJB server and

containers provide

• Good EJB deployments might page the system administrator if a

serious error occurs that require immediate attention

• Some EJB Products have hooks into professional monitoring

products for helping system administrator

 Enterprise Java Beans

• An Enterprise Java Beans is a server side software component that

can be deployed in a distributed multi tier environment

• The client of a enterprise java beans can be a servlet, an applet or

even another enterprise java bean

• The client request to a bean can result in a whole chain of beans

being called resulting in subdividing a complex task into subtasks

handled by simple beans

• There are two different kinds of enterprise java beans the session

beans and the entity beans

 Session Beans

• Session beans are business process objects that implements

business logic, business rules and workflow

• Session beans are reusable components that contain logic for

business processes

• A session bean can perform price quoting, order entry, video

compression, banking transactions, stock trades, complex

calculations etc.
 Session Beans (contd.)

• Session beans are called session beans because they live for about

as long as the session of the client code that is calling the

session bean exists

• Session beans are usable by one client at a time and they are not

shared between clients

• The EJB container is responsible for managing the lifetime of beans

• The container destroys session beans at the appropriate time

• There are two subtypes of session beans the stateful session beans

and stateless session bean

 Stateful Session Beans

• Some business processes can be performed in a single method

request other business processes can last across multiple

method requests and transactions

• A stateful session bean is a bean that is designed to service

business

processes that span multiple method requests or transactions

• The stateful session beans retain state on behalf of an individual

client so in a stateful session bean’s state is changed during a

method invocation the same state will be available for the client in
 Stateless Session Beans

• A stateless session bean is a bean that is designed to service

business processes that have a single request

• A single request business process does not require state to be

maintained across method invocations

• An example for stateless session bean is video compression where

the client could pass in a buffer of uncompressed data as well as

a compression factor and the bean would return a compressed

buffer and the bean does not retain any state

• Another example is a credit card verification component

 Entity Beans

• An Entity bean is a component that represents persistent data

• Entity beans represent real data objects such as customers, products

employees, bank accounts, orders, stock portfolios etc.

• Entity bean do not contain business process logic rather they model

data

• Session beans use entity beans to represent the data session bean

uses
 Entity Beans (contd.)
• It is possible to read an entire set of data out of a database at once

into an in memory entity bean component and then manipulate

this entity bean by calling methods on it

• An entity bean implements the data access logic layer in a multi tier

architecture
EJB Container Permanent Storage

Client code
such as Entity Bean
applet
 Entity Beans (contd.)
• Entity bean survive critical failures such as application server

crashing because entity beans are representation of data in a

permanent database

• Entity beans have a life cycle much longer than Session beans even

years depending on how long data sits in the database

• Multiple clients can use Entity beans simultaneously

• One client can isolate from another by using transactions

• Transactions guarantee multiple clients to perform persistent

operations independently of one another

 Entity Beans (contd.)
• Entity beans can be used with legacy database where data is already

inside

• The data that entity beans model could exist in a database before a

company decided to employ Enterprise Java Beans

• Database records can be read in and interpreted as objects in almost

any language and EJB takes advantage of this and allows for the

transformation of a database’s data into Java object

• There are two subtypes of entity beans the bean managed

persistent
 Bean Managed Persistent Entity Beans

• Entity beans are persistent components because their state is saved

to a secondary storage such as a relational database

• A bean managed persistent entity bean is an entity bean that must be

persisted by the component developer

• The component developer must write code to translate the in memory

fields into an underlying data store such as a relational database

• The component developer must handle the persistent operations

 Container Managed Persistent Entity Beans
• In Container managed persistent entity bean the container provides

an automatic persistence for the entity beans

• The container performs every function including saving loading and

finding component data

• The developer just describe what should be persisted to the

container and it will persist for the developer

• The container gives theoretical database independence allowing the

developer to switch one data store for another

• The EJB containers perform a wide variety of mapping functionality

 Motivation for Multiple Bean Types
• Why EJB offers various kinds of beans

• Sun is not the only company involved in constructing the Enterprise

Java Beans standard

• Many companies have been involved each with customers that have

different kinds of distributed systems and to accommodate the

needs of different enterprise applications sun decided for

different kinds of beans

• By offering various kinds of beans EJB provides increased

functionality
 Session Beans versus Entity Beans

• How to decide what to put in a session bean and what to put in an

entity bean

• The key difference between the two are that session bean represent

business processes and business logic and entity bean holds

permanent business entities such as businesses data and data

related logic

• Consider an example where a customer wants to order 15

workstations
 Session Beans versus Entity Beans (contd.)

• The pricer component is represented by a session bean, after the

price is calculated the pricer is free to service another client

• When the customer places the order an order entity bean is used to

put up the order

• The order is fulfilled by another session bean that contains the logic

to do so

• Session beans model a current business process which can be tuned

 Session Beans versus Entity Beans (contd.)

• Entity bean defines the core business data such as purchase orders,

customers and bank accounts that do not change very much

over time

• In practice entity beans achieve a higher level of reuse

• Session beans never embody permanent data but merely provide

access to data

• Session beans are not persistable they represent business processe

• Entity beans embody data and are persistable

 EJB Container Responsibilities
• The most important responsibility of an EJB container is to provide

an environment in which enterprise beans can run

• EJB containers house the enterprise beans and make them available

for clients to invoke remotely

• The container is responsible for connecting clients to beans,

performing transaction coordination, providing persistence,

managing a beans life cycle etc.

• EJB containers are a huge challenge to write because they are so

 EJB Container Responsibilities (contd.)
• The features an EJB container provides are

• Resource Management and Bean Life Cycle Management

• State Management

• Transactions

• Security

• Persistence

• Remote Accessibility and Location Transparency

• Glue Code and Bean Installation Tools

• Specialized Container Features

 Resource Management and Bean Life Cycle Management

• The container is responsible for providing all resource management

services

• The resources include threads, socket connections, database

connections and more

• The EJB container is also responsible for controlling the life cycle of

the deployed enterprise bean components

• As client request arrive the EJB container dynamically instantiates,

destroys and reuses beans as appropriate

Resource Management and Bean Life Cycle Management (contd.)
• If a client request a certain type of bean that does not exist in

memory the EJB container may instantiate a new in-memory

instance in behalf of the client

• If a new bean has to be instantiated and the system is low in memory

then the container can destroy some beans that are not being

used anymore and this is called instance pooling

• The EJB container is responsible for coordinating the entire effort of

resource management as well as managing the deployed bean’s

 State Management

• A bean can be a stateless bean or a stateful bean

• A stateless bean can be reassigned to other clients dynamically by

the EJB container because there is no state lost from the primary

client

• The reuse of beans results in incredible resource gains

• If a client times out the EJB container destroys the bean or reuse it

• In a stateful bean the EJB container should do the state management

 State Management (contd.)
• Entity beans are inherently stateful because they represent data

• Consider the case when a new client request a component and the

container has reached the limit

• The container can take a component that hasn’t been used for a

while

and write the state out to disk and the bean can be reassigned to

a different client

• When the original client makes a request the original client’s bean

state can be read back in from disk in a different in-memory bean

 Transactions
• A transaction is a series of operations that appear to execute as one

large atomic operation

• Transactions allow multiple users to share the same data and they

guarantee that any set of data they update will be completely and

wholly written

• Transactions ensure that database data is kept consistent

• The EJB container handles the underlying transaction operations

coordinating efforts behind the scenes between transaction

participants
 Security

• The role of EJB container in security is to handle the validation of

users for tasks they wish to accomplish

• An Access Control Lists (ACL) is a list of users and their rights is

used to validate

• If the user has the correct rights he can perform the desired

operation
 Persistence

• Entity beans are persistent objects that represent data in an

underlying storage

• EJB containers provide the transparent persistence of container

managed persistent entity beans

• From EJB 1.1 specification onwards the container managed

persistence came to reality

 Remote Accessibility and Location Transparency
• The EJB container insulates the bean from all networking issues

• Enterprise Java Beans are written as standalone nonnetworked

components but once deployed in the container they become

distributed components deployable across multiple tiers

• EJB containers use Java Remote Method Invocation interfaces to

specify remote accessibility

•The benefit of distributed communication technologies like JRMI is

that the client code will be unaware of the physical location of

the component it is calling

 Remote Accessibility and Location Transparency (contd.)
• The client should be totally unaware of where the component really is

whether the component is local or remote should be transparent

to the client and this is known as location transparency

• In the bean the machine location should not be hard coded because

it

is an essential part of reusable component that can be deployed

in a wide variety of multitier situations

• If a machine that has components crashes it will be possible to

reroute client invocations to other machines without the client

 Glue Code and Bean Installation Tools

• Each EJB container ships with a suite of glue-code tools which are

meant to integrate beans into the EJB containers environment

• The container’s glue code tools are responsible for transforming an

enterprise bean into fully managed distributed server side

component

• The glue code involves logic to handle resource management, life

cycle, state management , transactions, security, persistence and

remote accessibility
 Specialized Container Features

• Other than the normal duties of a container specialized containers

can provide additional qualities of services

• If a bean depends on particular qualities of service it may not run in

other containers

• Some containers may provide a way to perform customized load

balancing between distributed components

• A high end EJB container may also provide dynamic resizing of

managed resources and components

 Specialized Container Features (contd.)

• eg. If clients are less active at night than during the day then a

smaller pool of resources is only required at night

• Some other specialized container functions are

• Integration to mainframe systems

• Distributed transactions

• Complex database persistence services

• Integrated XML facilities

• CORBA integration and support

Introduction to Session
Bean
 The Enterprise Bean Class
• In order for a bean to work in any container and to work with any

client of that bean the bean must adhere to a well defined interface

• The EJB provides the enterprise bean component implementation in

an enterprise bean class

• An enterprise bean class contains implementation details of the

component

• The session beans of enterprise bean class contain business

process related logic such as logic to compute prices, transfer

funds between bank accounts or perform order entry

 The Enterprise Bean Class (contd.)

• The EJB specification defines a few standard interfaces that the bean

class should implement

• These interfaces force a bean to expose certain methods that all

beans must provide as defined by the EJB component model

• The container calls these required methods to manage a bean and

alert the bean to significant events

• The basic interface that all bean classes must implement is the

javax.ejb.EnterpriseBean interface
 The Enterprise Bean Class (contd.)

public interface javax.ejb.EnterpriseBean extends java.io.Serializable

{ }

•Both session beans and entity beans have more specific interfaces

• All session beans must implement javax.ejb.SessionBean while all

entity beans must implement javax.ejb.EntityBean

• The Enterprise java bean class never needs to implement the

javax.ejb.EnterpriseBean interface directly rather the bean class

implements the interface corresponding to its bean type

 The EJB Object

• A client wants to use an instance of an enterprise bean class the

client never invokes the method directly rather the invocation is

intercepted by the EJB container and then delegated to the bean

• The enterprise bean class can not be called across the network

directly because an enterprise java bean class is not network

enabled

• It is the EJB container that handles networking by wrapping the bean

in a network enabled object

 The EJB Object (contd.)

• The network enabled object receives calls from client and delegates

these calls to instances of the bean class

• The EJB container can automatically perform some management

issues like transaction logic, security logic, bean instance

pooling logic etc

• The EJB container is acting as a layer of indirection between the

client and the bean and the layer of indirection manifests itself

as
 The EJB Object (contd.)
EJB Container

Client Home
Code Interface

Home
Ca
ll a

Object
m
et
ho
d

EJB
Remote Object
Interface
Ac Enterprise
q
del uire a Java Bean
ega B
the t e a
Be e the n an
an me d
tho
d to
 The EJB Object (contd.)

• The EJB Object is an intelligent object that knows how to perform

intermediate logic that the EJB container requires before a

method call is serviced by a bean class instance

• The EJB object acts as glue between the client and the bean and it

exposes every business method that the bean exposes

• EJB objects delegate all client requests to beans

• All EJB objects have container specific code inside them

 The EJB Object (contd.)

• EJB object can be thought as a physical part of the EJB Container

• Each bean’s EJB object is different so that the container vendor

supplies glue code tools that generate the class file for the EJB

object automatically
 The Remote Interface
• The clients invoke methods on EJB objects rather than the beans

themselves so the EJB objects must clone every business

method that the bean exposes

• An interface is created which duplicates all the business logic

methods that the corresponding bean exposes and this interface

is called the remote interface

• Remote interfaces must comply with the rules that the EJB

specification defines like all remote interfaces must derive from

a
 The Remote Interface (contd.)

public interface java.ejb.EJBObject extends java.rmi.Remote

{ public abstract javax.ejb.EJBHome getEJBHome()

throws java.rmi.RemoteException;

public abstract java.lang.Object getPrimaryKey()

throws java.rmi.RemoteException;

public abstract void remove()

throws java.rmi.RemoteException, javax.ejb.RemoteException;

public abstract javax.ejb.Handle getHandle()

throws java.rmi.RemoteException;
 The Remote Interface (contd.)
public abstract boolean isIdentical(javax.ejb.EJBObject)

throws java.rmi.RemoteException; }

• These methods are the required methods that all EJB objects must

implement

• The client code that wants to work with the beans calls the methods

in javax.ejb.EJBObject

• When a bean’s client invokes any of the business methods the EJB

object will delegate the method to its corresponding

implementation which resides in the bean itself

 The Remote Interface (contd.)
METHOD EXPLANATION
getEJBHome() Retrieves a reference to the corresponding
home object
getPrimaryKey() Returns the primary key for the EJB object
and is only used by entity beans
remove() Destroys the EJB object. When the client code
is done with using an EJB object this method
is called . The system resources for the EJB
object can be reclaimed . With entity beans
remove() also deletes the bean from the
underlying persistent store
getHandle() Acquires a handle for the EJB object. An EJB
handle is a persistent reference to an EJB
object that the client can stow away
somewhere. Later on the client can use the
handle to reaquire the EJB object and start
using it again
IsIdentical() Tests whether two EJB objects are identical
 Java RMI and EJB Objects

• The javax.ejb.EJBObject extends java.rmi.Remote interface which is

part of Java Remote Method Invocation (JRMI)

• Any object that implements java.rmi.Remote is a remote object and is

callable from a different Java Virtual Machine

• The EJb object provided by the container implements the remote

interface by the help of java.rmi.Remote as a result the EJB

object becomes fully networked object able to be called from

 Java RMI and EJB Objects (contd.)

• EJB remote interfaces must conform to Java RMI’s remote interface

rules like all methods should throw a remote exception using

java.rmi.RemoteException

• A remote exception indicates that something unexpected happened

on the network like netwok problem or machine failure while

invoking a bean

• Remote interfaces must conform to Java RMI’s parameter passing

conventions
 Java RMI and EJB Objects (contd.)

• In JRMI the physical location of the remote object is masked so the

client code is unaware of whether the EJB object it is using is

located on a machine next door or a machine across the internet

• EJB guarantees location transparency of distributed components

this means the client code is portable and not tied to a specific

multitier deployment configuration

• A more portable version of Java RMI called RMI-IIOP is now available

that provides interoperability with CORBA systems

 The Home Object
• How do clients acquire references to EJB objects

• The client cannot instantiate an EJB object directly because EJB

objects could exist on a different machine than the client is on

and the client will not be aware of exactly where the EJB object

reside

• To acquire a reference to an EJB object the client code asks for an

EJB object from an EJB object factory which is responsible for

instantiating and destroying EJB objects

• The EJB specification calls such a factory a home object

 The Home Object (contd.)

• The responsibilities of home object are

• Create EJB objects

• Find existing EJB objects

• Remove EJB objects

• Like EJB objects, home objects are proprietary and specific to each

EJB container

• Home objects are physically part of the container and are auto

generated by the container vendor tools

 The Home Interface
• Home interfaces define methods for creating destroying and finding

EJB objects

• The containers home object implements home interface

• EJB defines some required methods that all home interfaces must

support and these required methods are defined in the

javax.ejb.EJBHome interface

• The parent javax.ejb.EJBHome derives from java.rmi.Remote this

means the home interfaces are fully networked Java RMI remote
 Deployment Descriptors
• Deployment descriptors enable EJB containers to provide implicit

middleware services to the enterprise java bean components

• An implicit middleware service is a service that the beans gain

without coding to any middleware API, the beans gain the

service automatically

• The middleware service include life cycle management, persistence,

transaction control and security services

• The deployment descriptor specifies the requirements of the bean

and they are

 Deployment Descriptors (contd.)
• Bean management and life cycle requirement : The deployment

descriptor settings indicate how the container should manage

the beans and specify if the bean is a session or entity bean

• Persistence requirement (entity bean only) : Authors of entity beans

use the deployment descriptors to inform the container about

whether the bean handles the persistence on its own or

delegates the persistence to the EJB container

• Transaction requirements : The transaction settings for a bean can

be specified in the deployment descriptors. These settings

 Deployment Descriptors (contd.)

control what the bean requirements are for running in a

transaction

• Security requirements : Deployment descriptors contain access

control entries which the beans and container use to control

access control to certain operations

• The deployment descriptor specify who is allowed to use which

beans and even who is allowed to use each method on a

particular bean
 Deployment Descriptors (contd.)
• It is the responsibility of a bean provider to create a deployment

descriptor

• When an application assembler is piecing together an application

from beans he can tune the deployment descriptor

• The deployment descriptor declare how the beans should use

middleware rather than writing code that uses middleware

• By having a separate customizable deployment descriptor it is easy

to fine tune components to a specific deployment environment

without changing the source code

 Bean Specific Properties

• A Java based properties file will be included with the bean

• The bean read these properties at runtime and use the properties to

tune how the bean functions

• eg. A computation bean can use properties to enable selection of an

algorithm to use

• A pricing bean could use properties to customize pricing rules

 Ejb jar File
• Once the bean classes, home interfaces, remote interfaces,

deployment descriptors and bean properties are ready they can

be packed into an entity called the Ejb jar file

• It is a compressed file that follows the .ZIP compression format

• Once the Ejb jar file is made the enterprise bean is complete and is a

deployable unit within an application server

• To install the EJB objects the jar file is decompressed , extracted and

the EJB objects and home objects are generated and deployed
 Session Bean

• Session beans are intended to represent business processes

• A business process task involves logic, algorithms and workflow

• Some examples of processes that can be represented using session

beans are billing a credit card, fulfilling an order and trading

stock
 Session Bean Lifetime

• A Session beans is a relatively short lived component

• The session bean has a life time equivalent to a client’s session

• The EJB container is empowered to destroy session beans if client

times out

• Session beans do not survive machine crash or application server

crashes
 Session Bean Lifetime (contd.)

•Session beans are nonpersistent as they are not saved to permanent

storage still they can perform database operations

• All session beans must expose required management callback

methods

• The container uses the callback methods to initialize and destroy

a bean and the callback methods are not intended for clients
 Conversational versus Nonconversational Session Beans
• A conversation is an interaction between a client and a bean

• A stateless session bean is a bean that holds conversation that span

a single method call

• A stateless session bean clears itself out all information pertaining to

the past invocation

• Stateless session bean store no conversational state from method to

method

• They are stateless because they do not hold multimethod

conversations
Conversational versus Nonconversational Session Beans (contd.)

• Any stateless session bean can service any client request because

they are all exactly the same

• Stateful session beans are components that hold conversations with

clients that may span many method calls

• During a conversation the bean holds conversational state for that

client
 All Session Bean Methods are Serialized

• When a method is called on a session bean instance the EJB

container guarantees that no other clients are using that instance

• If multiple clients simultaneously invoke methods on a session bean

the invocations are serialized or performed in lock step

• The container automatically makes clients line up one by one to use

bean instance

• The container can provide other instances of the bean to service

 Understanding How to write Session Beans
• The session enterprise bean class must implement the

javax.ejb.SessionBean interface which extends

javax.ejb.EnterpriseBean

• The interface defines a few required methods that the EJB container

calls on the bean to alert it about important events

• Clients of the bean will never call these methods because these

methods are not made available to clients via EJB object

• Entity beans have their own interface called javax.ejb.EntityBean

which also inherits from javax.ejb.EnterpriseBean

 Understanding How to write Session Beans (contd.)
public interface java.ejb.SessionBean extends

javax.ejb.EnterpriseBean

{ public abstract void setSessionContext(SessionContext ctx)

throws java.rmi.RemoteException;

public abstract void ejbPassivate()

throws java.rmi.RemoteException;

public abstract void ejbActivate()

throws java.rmi.RemoteException;

public abstract void ejbRemove()

throws java.rmi.RemoteException; }
 setSessionContext(SessionContext ctx)

• The container calls setSessionContext() to associate a bean with a

session context

• A session context is a beans gateway to interact with the container

• The bean can use session context to query the container about the

current transactional state, current security state and more

• A typical bean implementation would store the context away in a

member variable so the context can be queried later as shown in

the following example

 setSessionContext(SessionContext ctx) (contd.)

Import javax.ejb.*;

public class MyBean implements SessionBean {

private SessionContext ctx;

public void setSessionContext(SessionContext ctx) {

this.ctx = ctx;

………..

}
 ejbCreate(…)
• The ejbCreate() method initialize the session bean

• Different ejbCreate() methods can be defined with different

arguments

• Clients can initialize the beans in different ways because there are

different ejbCreate(…) method signatures

• At least one ejbCreate() method must be provided in a session bean

• The implementation of ejbCreate(…) should perform initialization of

beans such as setting member variables to the argument values

passed in as shown in the following example

 ejbCreate(…) (contd.)

Import javax.ejb.*;

public class MyBean implements SessionBean {

private int memberVariable;

public void ejbCreate(int initialValue) {

this.memberVariable = initialValue;

………..

}
 ejbCreate(…) (contd.)
• The ejbCreate() methods are callback methods that the container will

invoke

• Client code never calls ejbCreate() method because clients never

deal

with beans directly they must go through the container

• Clients must have some way to pass parameters to ejbCreate()

method because clients supply the initialization parameters

• A home interface is the factory interface that clients call to initialize

the bean so each ejbCreate() method must be duplicated in the

 ejbPassivate( )

• If too many beans are instantiated the EJB container can passivate

some of them by writing the beans to a temporary storage

• The container can then release the resources the beans had claimed

• The beans implementation of the ejbPassivate() should release any

resources the bean may be holding

 ejbPassivate ( ) (contd.)

Import javax.ejb.*;

public class MyBean implements SessionBean {

public void ejbPassivate() {

<close socket connections, etc….>

………..

}
 ejbActivate( )
• If the client needs to use a bean that has been passivated the

container brings the bean back into memory and activates it

• Immediately after the bean is activated the container calls the

ejbActivate() method
import javax.ejb.*;
public class MyBean implements SessionBean {
public void ejbActivate() {
<open socket connections, etc….>
}
………..
}
 ejbRemove( )
• If a container wants to remove the session bean it calls the

ejbRemove() callback method

• ejbRemove() is a clean up method which takes no parameters

• There is only one ejbRemove() method per bean

import javax.ejb.*;
public class MyBean implements SessionBean {
public void ejbActivate() {
<open socket connections, etc….>
}
………..
}
 Business methods
• There are two types of methods the callback methods and the

business methods

• The business methods actually solve business problems

• For clients to call the business methods the business methods must

be listed in the remote interface

import javax.ejb.*;

public class MyBean implements SessionBean {

public int add(int i, int j) {

return (i + j);

}
 Understanding How to call Session Beans

• Calling the session beans takes place in four steps and they are

• Look up a home object

• Use the home object to create an EJB object

• Call business methods on the EJB object

• Remove the EJB object

 Looking Up a Home Object

• Java Naming and Directory Service (JNDI) provides a standard

interface for locating users, machines, networks, objects and

services

• In J2EE , JNDI is used for locating resources across an enterprise

deployment like home objects, environment properties, database

resources etc.

• There are two common steps that must be taken to find any

resources in a J2EE deployment

 Looking Up a Home Object (contd.)
1. Associate the resource with a nickname in the deployment

descriptor, the J2EE product will bind the nickname to the resource

2. Clients of the resource can use the nickname with JNDI to look up

the resource across a deployment

• EJB containers mask the specific locations of home objects from

the client

• Clients do not hard code the machine names that home objects

reside on but rather they use JNDI to look up home objects

• For clients to locate a home object a nickname must be provided for

the beans home object

 Looking Up a Home Object (contd.)

• Clients will use the nickname to identify the home object it wants

• JNDI goes over the network to some directory service to look for the

home object and when the home object is found a reference to it

is returned to the client

• To retrieve the home object a JNDIlookup() operation must be

performed on the remote directory

• The following figure shows how to call a session beans

 EJB Container

3 Home
Client
Object
5
4
7 Enterprise
6 EJB Java
1 2 Object Beans

1. Retrieve Home Object Reference

JNDI
2. Return Home Object Reference
3. Request to create a new EJB object
4. Create EJB Object
5. Return EJB object reference
6. Invoke business method
7. Delegate request to Bean
 Creating an EJB Object
• As the client code has a reference to the home object then a call is

made to the home object which acts as a factory to create EJB

object

• To create an EJB object call one of the create() methods on the home

• In case of stateless session beans no initialization parameters are

required to call the create() method

• When create() method is called the bean’s instance ejbCreate()

method may not be called because the container can pool and

reuse existing beans

 Calling a Method

• As the client has an EJB object it can start calling one or more of the

methods that the bean exposes through the EJB object

• When the client calls a method on the EJB object the EJB object

must choose a bean instance to service the request

• The EJB object may need to create a new instance or reuse an

existing instance

• When the bean instance is done the EJB object takes the return value

from the beans method and ships it back to the client

 Destroying the EJB Method

• When to destroy an EJB object call a remove() method on the EJB

object or home object

• The remove() method enables the container to destroy the EJB object

• As with creating a bean destroying a bean might not necessarily

correspond with literally destroying in memory bean objects

because the EJB container controls their life cycles to allow

for pooling between heterogeneous clients

The Basics of Stateless
Session Beans
 Characteristics of Stateless Session Beans

• Stateless session beans are components that model business

processes that can be performed in a single method call

• All stateless beans appear identical to clients so clients cannot tell

them apart

• Stateless session beans cannot retain state between method calls

they also cannot retain state after a client passes data to an

ejbCreate() cal

• Stateless session beans do not take any parameters clients never

 Characteristics of Stateless Session Beans (contd.)

• As stateless session beans do not take parameters so the EJB

containers can precreate instances of stateless session beans

•The EJB containers can pool stateless session bean instances before

the client connects and when a client calls a method the

container can retrieve an instance from the pool have it serviced

and then return it to the pool

• The container dynamically assign instances of the bean to different

clients
 Characteristics of Stateless Session Beans (contd.)

• The benefit of bean instance pooling is that the pool of beans can be

much smaller than the actual number of clients connecting

• Bean pools do not need to be statically sized they can be dynamically

resized according to the demand

• If more clients connect to the deployment during day than night then

the container might allow to have a large pool during day and a

small pool at night which frees system resources for other tasks

during off-peak hours

 EJB Object Decoupling
• Because the beans are pooled and reused they are decoupled from

EJB objects

• The bean can be reassigned at any time to another EJB object

depending on the containers strategy

• A new bean does not necessarily have to be created at the same time

an EJB object is created rather a bean can be taken from the

available pool

• If client load suddenly increases more beans can be instantiated by

the EJB container at any time

 Writing a Hello World Stateless Session Bean

• In this stateless session bean a component running in a distributed

object framework will be responsible for returning the string

“Hello World” to the client

• The first step is coding the bean’s remote interface

• The remote interface duplicates every business method that the

beans expose

• The EJB object will delegate all client requests to actual beans

• The following program is the remote interface of Hello World

 Hello World remote interface source code

package com.session.helloworld;
import javax.ejb.*;
import java.rmi.RemoteException;
import java.rmi.Remote;

/* This is the HelloBean remote interface.

This interface is what clients operate on when they interact with

EJB objects. The container vendor will implement this interface,
the implemented object is the EJB object, which delegates
invocations to the actual bean.
*/
 Hello World remote interface source code (contd.)

public interface Hello extends EJBObject {

/*
The one method - hello - returns a greeting to the client.
*/
public String hello() throws RemoteException;
}
 Hello World remote interface explanation

• The javx.ejb.EJBObject is extended so that the container generated

EJB object which implements the remote interface will contain

every method that the javax.ejb.EJBObject interface defines

• There is a business method hello() which returns the string “ Hello

World “ back to the client

• As the remote interface is a Java RMI remote interface that extends

java.rmi.Remote , it must throw a remote exception and that is

the only difference between the remot interfaces hello()

signature and the beans hello() signature

• The exception indicates a networking or other critical problem

 Hello World bean source code
package com.session.helloworld;
import javax.ejb.*;
/*
Demonstration stateless session bean.
*/
public class HelloBean implements SessionBean {
/* EJB-required methods */
public void ejbCreate() {
System.out.println("ejbCreate()");
}
public void ejbRemove() {
System.out.println("ejbRemove()");
}
 Hello World bean source code (contd.)
public void ejbActivate() {
System.out.println("ejbActivate()");
}
public void ejbPassivate() {
System.out.println("ejbPassivate()");
}
public void setSessionContext(SessionContext ctx) {
System.out.println("setSessionContext()");
}
// Business methods
public String hello() {
System.out.println("hello()");
return "Hello, World!";
 Hello World bean explanation

• The required container callback methods are also added to the code

• The bean implements javx.ejb.SessionBean interface which makes

the bean a session bean

• The bean is stateless and has an identical initialization method a

simple ejbCreate() that takes no parameters

• When the bean is destroyed there is nothing to clean up so a very

simple ejbRemove() method can be used

 Hello World bean explanation

• The setSessionContext() method associates a bean with an

environment

• The ejbActivate() and ejbPassivate() methods are used when beans

are activated and passivated and they do not apply to stateless

session beans so the methods are empty

 Hello World home interface source code

package com.session.helloworld;
import javax.ejb.*;
import java.rmi.RemoteException;
/*
This is the home interface for HelloBean. This interface is
implemented by the EJB Server's glue-code tools – the
implemented object is called the Home Object, and serves as a
factory for EJB Objects. One create() method is in this Home
Interface, which corresponds to the ejbCreate() method in
HelloBean.
*/
 Hello World home interface source code (contd.)

public interface HelloHome extends EJBHome {

/*
This method creates the EJB Object
@return The newly created EJB Object.
*/
Hello create() throws RemoteException, CreateException;
}
 Hello World home interface explanation

• Home interface specifies mechanisms to create and destroy EJB

objects

• The home interface extends javax.ejb.EJBHome which is required for

all home interfaces

• EJBHome defines a way to destroy an EJB object so there is no

need

to write a method to destroy an EJB object

• The home interface exposes one method to create an EJB object and

takes no arguments because this is a stateless session beans

• The create method throws a java.rmi.RemoteException because

 Writing the Deployment Descriptor

• The deployment descriptor describes a bean’s middleware

requirements to the container

• Deployment descriptors are one of the key features of EJB because

they allow to declaratively specify attributes on beans rather

than programming the functionality into the bean itself

• The EJB container or IDE environment should supply tools to help in

generating the deployment descriptor

• There are many different settings that make up a deployment

descriptor that are relevant to session beans and they are

 Writing the Deployment Descriptor (contd.)

• Bean home name : The nickname that clients use to look up for the

bean’s home object

• Enterprise bean class name : The fully qualified name of the

enterprise bean class

• Home interface class name : The fully qualified name of the home

interface

• Remote interface class name : The fully qualified name of the home
 Writing the Deployment Descriptor (contd.)

• Reentrant : Whether the enterprise bean allows reentrant calls, this

setting must be false for session beans, it applies for entity

beans only

• Stateful or stateless : Whether the session bean is stateful or

stateless session bean

• Session timeout : The length of time in seconds before a client

should time out when calling methods of a bean

 Deployment Descriptor Settings for HelloBean

Deployment Descriptor Value

setting
Bean home name HelloHome

Enterprise bean class name Com.session.helloworld.HelloBean

Home interface class name Com.session.helloworld.HelloHome

Remote interface class name Com.session.helloworld.Hello

Environment properties <empty>

Re-entrant false
Stateful or stateless STATELESS_SESSION
Session timeout 10 seconds
 Hello World Client source code
package com.session.helloworld;
import javax.ejb.*;
import javax.naming.*;
import java.rmi.*;
import java.util.Properties;
/*
This class is an example of client code which invokes methods on
a simple stateless session bean.
*/
public class HelloClient {
public static void main(String[] args) {
try {
/* Get System properties for JNDI initialization */
 Hello World Client source code (contd.)
Properties props = System.getProperties();
/* Get a reference to the HelloHome Object – the factory for
Hello EJB Objects */
Context ctx = new InitialContext(props);
HelloHome home = (HelloHome) ctx.lookup("HelloHome");
/* Use the factory to create the Hello EJB Object */
Hello hello = home.create();
/* Call the hello() method, and print it */
System.out.println(hello.hello());
/* Done with EJB Object, so remove it */
hello.remove();
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} } }
 Hello World client code explanation

• The client code performs the following tasks

• Looks up a home object

• Uses the home object to create an EJB object

• Calls hello() on the EJB object

• Removes the EJB object

The Basics of Stateful
Session Beans
 Stateful Session Beans

• Stateful beans are conversational beans because they hold

conversations with clients that span multiple method

invocations

• Stateful session beans store conversational state within the bean

• The conversational state is specific to a particular client

 Characteristics of Stateful Session Beans

• Assume a situation where a number of clients having conversation

with stateful session beans running within a container

• The EJB container has only a finite amount of resources such as

memory , database connections, and socket connections

• If the number of clients that is trying to access the beans increases

the container could easily run out of resources

• In stateless session beans pooling is easy and a few beans can

service thousands of clients because there is no state to save

• In stateful session beans pooling is not simple

 Characteristics of Stateful Session Beans (contd.)
• When a client invokes a method on a bean, the client starts a

conversation with the bean and the conversational state stored

in the bean must be available for that same client on the next

method request

• Therefore the container cannot easily pool beans and dynamically

assign them to handle arbitrary client method requests as each

bean is storing state on behalf of a particular client

• This problem is similar to that of operating systems when the

physical memory is full and an application is to be executed the

hard disk is made as an extension of physical memory

 Characteristics of Stateful Session Beans (contd.)

• When an application goes idle its memory can be swapped out from

physical memory and onto hard disk and when the application

becomes active again the related data is swapped in from the

hard disk into the physical memory

•The same scenario can be used with stateful session bean resources

• To limit the number of stateful session bean instances in memory the

container can swap out a stateful bean saving its

conversational state to a storage and this is called passivation

 Characteristics of Stateful Session Beans (contd.)
• When the original client invokes a method the passivated

conversational state is swapped in to a bean and this is called

activation

• The activated instance is resuming its conversation from the point

where the original instance was passivated

• The passivation/activation process can create I/O bottleneck

• How to decide which beans to activate and which beans to passivate

• Most containers will employ a Least Recently Used (LRU) passivation

strategy which means to passivate the bean that has been

called the least recently

 Characteristics of Stateful Session Beans (contd.)

• This is a good algorithm because remote clients have the habit of

disconnecting from the network leaving the beans stranded

without a client ready to be passivated

• Any bean involved in a transaction cannot be passivated until the

transaction completes

• If a client request comes in but that client’s conversation has been

passivated the container will activate the bean on demand

reading the passivated state back into the memory

• To serialize a bean the bean must extend java.io.Serializable

 Characteristics of Stateful Session Beans (contd.)
• When a container passivates a bean it uses object serialization to

convert the bean’s conversational state into a bit blob and the

bit blob is written out to storage

• Activation reverses the process a serialized blob that had been

written to storage is read back into memory and converted to in

memory bean data

• The EJB container calls the ejbPassivate() method to give the bean a

chance to release the resources the bean held

• The ejbActivate() gives the bean a chance to restore the resources it

released during ejbPassivate()

 A Simple Stateful Session Bean

• The bean is a counter bean and the bean will be counting up one by

one

• The current count will be stored within the bean and it will increment

as client request arrive

• This is a stateful bean and it will hold a multimethod conversation

with a particular client

• The remote interface difines a single business method count() which

is responsible for incrementing an integer member variable

called val
 Count Bean remote interface source code

package com.session.count;
import javax.ejb.*;
import java.rmi.RemoteException;
/* These are CountBean's business logic methods. This interface is
what clients operate on when they interact with EJB objects. The
container vendor will implement this interface; the implemented
object is the EJB object, which delegates invocations to the
actual bean. */
public interface Count extends EJBObject {
/* Increments the int stored as conversational state */
public int count() throws RemoteException;
}
 Count Bean source code
package com.session.count;
import javax.ejb.*;
/* Demonstration Stateful Session Bean. This Bean is initialized to
some integer value, and has a business method which
increments
the value. This example shows the basics of how to write a
stateful session bean, and how passivation/activation works.
*/
public class CountBean implements SessionBean {
private transient SessionContext ctx;
/* The current counter is our conversational state. */
public int val;
/* Business methods Counts up */
 Count Bean source code (contd.)
public int count() {
System.out.println("count()");
return ++val;
}
/* EJB-required methods */
public void ejbCreate(int val) throws CreateException {
this.val = val;
System.out.println("ejbCreate()");
}
public void ejbRemove() {
System.out.println("ejbRemove()");
}
 Count Bean source code (contd.)

public void ejbActivate() {

System.out.println("ejbActivate()");
}

public void ejbPassivate() {

System.out.println("ejbPassivate()");
}
public void setSessionContext(SessionContext ctx) { }
}
 Count Bean source code explanation

• The bean implements javax.ejb.SessionBean this means the bean

must define all methods in the SessionBean interface

• The ejbCreate() initialization method takes a parameter val, this is in

stark contrast to stateless session beans which never take

parameters in ejbCreate()

• The initialization method uses val as the starting state of the counter

• The val member variable obeys the rules for conversational state

because it is serializable and it will automatically be preserved

during passivation and activation

 Count Home interface source code

package com.session.count;

import javax.ejb.*;

import java.rmi.RemoteException;

/* This is the home interface for CountBean. This interface is

implemented by the EJB Server's glue-code tools - the

implemented object is called the Home Object, and serves as a

factory for EJB Objects. One create() method is in this Home

Interface, which corresponds to the ejbCreate() method in the

CountBean file.

*/
 Count Home interface source code (contd.)

public interface CountHome extends EJBHome {

/* This method creates the EJB Object. @param val Value to initialize

counter to @return The newly created EJB Object.

*/

Count create(int val) throws RemoteException, CreateException;

}
 Count Home interface explanation

• The home interface shows how to create and destroy the Count EJB

object

• The home interface implements javax.ejb.EJBHome so it gets the

remove() destroy methods free

 Deployment Descriptor Settings for Count Bean

Deployment Descriptor setting Value

Bean home name CountyHome

Enterprise bean class name com.session.count.CountBean

Home interface class name com.session.count.CountHome

Remote interface class name com.session.count.Count

Environment properties <empty>

Re-entrant false
Stateful or stateless STATEFUL_SESSION
Session timeout 10 seconds
Max beans loaded at any time 2
 Count Bean’s deployment descriptor

• The Max beans loaded at any time descriptor restricts the maximum

number of beans loaded

• The container can load three beans at a time and the container will be

forced to passivate in order to reduce the number of beans in

memory

• The bean’s stateful nature is defined declaratively in the deployment

descriptor

• The bean is not declared stateful in the bean code itself because this

allows to easily switch from the stateful to staless paradigm and

back
 Count client source code

package com.session.count;
import javax.ejb.*;
import javax.naming.*;
import java.util.Properties;
/*This class is a simple example of client code which invokes
methods on a simple Stateless Enterprise Bean. This create 3
EJB
Objects in this example, but we only allow the container to have 2

in memory. This illustrates how beans are passivated to storage.

*/
public class CountClient {
public static void main(String[] args) {
 Count client source code (contd.)

Properties props = System.getProperties();

/* Get a reference to the Home Object – the factory for EJB
Objects */
Context ctx = new InitialContext(props);
CountHome home = (CountHome) ctx.lookup("CountHome");
/* An array to hold 3 Count EJB Objects */
Count count[] = new Count[3];
int countVal = 0;
/* Create and count() on each member of array */
System.out.println("Instantiating beans...");
for (int i=0; i < 3; i++) {
/* Create an EJB Object and initialize it to the current count value */
 Count client source code (contd.)

count[i] = home.create(countVal);
/* Add 1 and print */
countVal = count[i].count();
System.out.println(countVal);
/* Sleep for 1/2 second */
Thread.sleep(500); }
/* A call on count() on each EJB Object to make sure the beans
were passivated and activated properly */
System.out.println("Calling count() on beans...");
for (int i=0; i < 3; i++) {
/* Add 1 and print */
countVal = count[i].count();
System.out.println(countVal);
 Count client source code (contd.)

/* Sleep for 1/2 second */

Thread.sleep(500); }
/* Done with EJB Objects, so remove them */
for (int i=0; i < 3; i++) {
count[i].remove();
}
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
 Count Bean’s client code description

• The client code performs the following steps

• A JNDI initial context is acquired

• The home object is located using JNDI

• The home object is used to create three different Count EJB objects

• Three different conversations are created and they simulate three

different clients

• The deployment descriptor limits the bean pool size to two beans so

during the previous step some of the three beans must have

been passivated and a message is printed during the

ejbPassivate() call back to show this

 Count Bean’s client code description (contd.)

• When a call is made on the count() method of an EJB object the

container is forced to activate the instances restoring the

conversations to memory once again and a message is printed

during the ejbActivate() callback to show this

• Finally all the EJB objects will be removed

 When are Stateful beans and stateless bean be used ?

• For stateless bean the EJB container is able to easily pool and reuse

beans allowing a few beans to service many clients

• When the same paradigm is used with a stateful beans the bean state

must be passivated and activated between method calls possibly

resulting in I/O bottlenecks

• A stateful session bean caches a client conversation in memory and

a bean failure may entail losing the conversation

• The largest drawback of statelessness is to push client specific data

into the stateless bean for each method invocation

 When are Stateful beans and stateless bean be used (contd.)

• Most stateless session bean will need to receive some information

that is specific to a certain client such as a bank account number

for a banking bean

• The information must be resupplied to stateless beans each time a

client request arrives because the bean cannot hold any state on

behalf of a particular client

• If client specific data is passed as parameters into the bean’s method

performance degradation happens especially if the data being

 When are Stateful beans and stateless bean be used (contd.)

• Another way to get client specific data to a stateless bean is for the

bean to store data persistently on behalf of a client and get the

data from persistent storage by supplying an identifier

• If a business process span multiple invocations and require a

conversation then stateful model fits the best

• If the business process lasts for a single method call then stateless

bean suits the best

• Some sophisticated deployments have a combination of stateless

and stateful beans