Sun Java System Application Server Platform Edition 8.1 2005Q2 Update 2 Administration Guide

- Previous: Chapter 7 Connector Resources
- Next: Admin Console Tasks for the J2EE Containers

# About the J2EE Containers

This section describes the J2EE containers included with the Application Server.

- Types of J2EE Containers

- The Web Container

- The EJB Container

## Types of J2EE Containers

J2EE containers provide runtime support for J2EE application components. J2EE application components use the protocols and methods of the container to access other application components and services provided by the server. The Application Server provides an application client container, an applet container, a Web container, and an EJB container. For a diagram that shows the containers, see the section Application Server Architecture.

## The Web Container

The Web Container is a J2EE container that hosts web applications. The web container extends the web server functionality by providing developers the environment to run servlets and JavaServer Pages (JSP files).

See Also:

- Configuring the General Web Container Settings

## The EJB Container

Enterprise beans (EJB components) are Java programming language server components that contain business logic. The EJB container provides local and remote access to enterprise beans.

There are three types of enterprise beans: session beans, entity beans, and message-driven beans. Session beans represent transient objects and processes and typically are used by a single client. Entity beans represent persistent data, typically maintained in a database. Message-driven beans are used to pass messages asynchronously to application modules and services.

The container is responsible for creating the enterprise bean, binding the enterprise bean to the naming service so other application components can access the enterprise bean, ensuring only authorized clients have access to the enterprise bean’s methods, saving the bean’s state to persistent storage, caching the state of the bean, and activating or passivating the bean when necessary.

See Also:

- Configuring the General EJB Settings

- Previous: Chapter 7 Connector Resources
- Next: Admin Console Tasks for the J2EE Containers

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