Implementing an EJB 3.0 MDB

EJB 3.0 greatly simplifies the development of EJBs, removing many complex development tasks. For example:

• The bean class can be a plain old Java object (POJO); it does not need to implement javax.ejb.MessageDrivenBean.

• Annotations are used for many features, including the message destination and topic (or queue) factory

• You can use injection to acquire a MessageDrivenEntityContext.

For more information, see "What is a Message-Driven Bean?".

To implement an EJB 3.0 message-driven bean:

1. Configure your message service provider.

   For more information, see:

   • "What Message Providers Can I use with My MDB?"

   • "Configuring Message Services"

2. Create the message-driven bean class.

   You can create a plain old Java object (POJO) and define it as a message-driven bean with the @MessageDriven annotation.

3. Configure message service provider information:

   You can define this information with the @ActivationConfigProperty annotation.

   For more information, see:

   • "Configuring an EJB 3.0 MDB to Use a Non-J2CA Message Service Provider"

   • "Configuring an EJB 3.0 MDB to Use a J2CA Message Service Provider"

4. Add a data member for the MessageDrivenContext.

   You can use resource injection to easily initialize this data member without getter and setter methods.

5. Implement the appropriate message listener interface:

   For a JMS message-driven bean, implement the javax.jms.MessageListener interface to provide the onMessages method with signature:

   public void onMessage(javax.jms.Message message)
   
   

   This method processes the incoming message. Most MDBs receive messages from a queue or a topic, then invoke an entity bean to process the request contained within the message.

   In this method, you can use the MessageDrivenContext to acquire and configure a javax.ejb.TimerService if you implemented the TimedObject interface (see step 6).

6. Optionally, implement the javax.ejb.TimedObject interface.

   Implement the ejbTimeout method with signature:

   public void ejbTimeout(javax.ejb.Timer timer)
   
   

7. Optionally, define lifecycle callback methods using the appropriate annotations.

   You do not need to define lifecycle methods: OC4J provides an implementation for all such methods. Define a method of your message-driven bean class as a lifecycle callback method only if you want to take some action of your own at a particular point in the message-driven bean's lifecycle.

   For more information, see "Configuring a Lifecycle Callback Method for an EJB 3.0 MDB".

8. Complete the configuration of your message-driven bean (see "Using EJB 3.0 MDB API").