What are Enterprise JavaBeans?

An Enterprise JavaBean (EJB) is a server-side component that encapsulates business logic. The EJB specification defines a server-side component model and programming interfaces for application servers. Servers and containers built under this specification take care of the low-level application programming, such as transaction management, security, and persistence. Since much of the difficult application programming is taken care of by the server, the developer is free to work on the business logic of the application.

The aim of this book is to help you develop an EJB business logic tier in JDeveloper -- how to make the components, called enterprise beans, and how to represent the business logic of the organization or system you are modeling.

Types of enterprise beans

An enterprise bean can be

Remote and local access

Clients can access EJBs locally or remotely. Local access is usually reserved for bean-to-bean interaction, while remote access is for applications. For more information about access types, see the topic About Remote and Local Access.

Additional Information

The EJB architecture specification describes the design goals, the roles in the application development and deployment lifecycle, and the contracts that ensure the compatibility of the various roles. It also contains useful background information about many of the terms and concepts referenced in the JDeveloper documentation. The specification is available from Sun Microsystems at http://java.sun.com/products/ejb/docs.html.