Sun Java System Application Server Enterprise Edition 8.1 2005Q2 Developer's Guide

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## Read-Only Beans

Another feature that the Application Server provides is the read-only bean, an entity bean that is never modified by an EJB client. Read-only beans avoid database updates completely.

A read-only bean can be used to cache a database entry that is frequently accessed but rarely updated (externally by other beans). When the data that is cached by a read-only bean is updated by another bean, the read-only bean can be notified to refresh its cached data.

The Application Server provides a number of ways by which a read-only bean’s state can be refreshed. By setting the `refresh-period-in-seconds` element in the `sun-ejb-jar.xml` file and the `trans-attribute` element in the `ejb-jar.xml` file, it is easy to configure a read-only bean that is (a) always refreshed, (b) periodically refreshed, (c) never refreshed, or (d) programmatically refreshed.

Read-only beans are best suited for situations where the underlying data never changes, or changes infrequently. For further information and usage guidelines, see Using Read-Only Beans.

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