About Remote and Local Interfaces

Clients can access an EJB 2.0 component through its remote or local interface. Local access is usually reserved for bean-to-bean interaction, while remote access is used for client applications.

Remote Interface - Remote beans are accessed using the bean's remote and remote home (often referred to as just "home") interfaces. Clients that access a remote bean may run on a different machine and use a different JVM than the bean itself.
Local Interface - Local access is not used for external client applications, but for interaction between beans or web components. Both beans must run in the same JVM. For example, a session bean that calls methods on an entity bean in the same module would use local access. The local interface is similar to the remote interface in that they both provide access to the bean's business methods. The local home interface provides access to the methods that control the lifecycle of the bean, as well as its finder methods.