Enterprise JavaBeans EJB

Introduction
 An Enterprise Java Bean (EJB) is a component the provides
reusable business logic functionality and/or a representation of a
persistent business entity
 It is a server side component that can be deployed in a distributed
multi - tier environment
 Client uses an interface to access the Bean indirectly
 A deployment descriptor describes the structure of the Bean and
how to execute the Bean as part of an application
Example
 An application needs to display a page that contains user Account
information
 The J2EE application displays a web page that contains an HTML
form where the user can enter the identification number of the
Account
 The browser then calls a JSP program
 The JSP program parses the identification number from the query
string sent by the browser
 If it is valid, then the number is passed to an EJB, which interacts
with a database to extract information about the account
 This information is returned to the JSP program, which formats the
information into a web page and sends the web page to the browser
for display
 Valid Request Data
B ID ID
R
O JSP EJB DATABASE
W
S Data Data
E
R Formatted
Output
 EJB Container
 An EJB container is a vendor-provided entity located on the EJB
server
 It manages system-level services for EJB like threading, security,
and persistence
 Each EJB must be installed in an EJB container
 A client’s request for web service is made to a web server, which
forwards the client’s request to the appropriate server
 Either the Java servlet server or the JSP server receives the client’s
request, depending on which is used by the J2EE application
 The Java servlet or JSP uses JNDI to look up the EJB resource
 EJB Classes
 There are three kinds of EJB types:
 Entity JavaBean class (Entity Bean)
 Session JavaBean class (Session Bean)
 Message – Driven JavaBean class (Message-Driven Bean)
 An Entity Bean is used to represent the business data
 A session bean is used to model a business process
 A message – driven bean is used to receive messages from JMS
 Distributed Objects : The foundation for
EJB
 EJB components are based on distributed objects
 A distributed object is an object that is callable from a remote
system
Distributed
Client Object

Remote Interface

Remote Interface

Stub Skeleton

Network
 How client calls a distributed object
 The client calls the stub which is a client side proxy object
 The stub is responsible for masking network communication from the
client
 The stub knows how to call over the network using sockets,
marshalling parameters as necessary into their network representation
 Marshaling:
 done by client (i.e., caller)

 packing the parameters into a message

 perform representation conversions if necessary

 also done by server (i.e., callee) for results

 Unmarshaling:
 done by receiver of message to extract parameters
Contd..
 The stub calls over the network to a skeleton, which is a server-side
proxy object.
 The skeleton masks network communication from the distributed
object
 The skeleton understands how to receive calls on a socket
 It also knows how to unmarshal the parameters from network
representation to the Java representation
 The skeleton delegates the call to the distributed object
 The distributed object does its work, and then returns control to the
skeleton, which returns to the stub which then returns the control to
the client
Contd..
 The key point is that the stub and the distributed object both
implement the same interface (called the Remote interface)
 A client who calls a method on the stub thinks he is calling the
distributed object directly; in reality, the client is calling an empty
stub that knows how to go over the network
 This is called local / remote transparency
 The Enterprise Bean class
 This is simply a Java class that conforms to a well defined interface
and obeys certain rules
 The EJB specification defines a few standard interfaces that our
bean class can implement:
 javax.ejb.EnterpriseBean
 javax.ejb.SessionBean
 javax.ejb.EntityBean
 javax.ejb.MessageDrivenBean
Javax.ejb.EnterpriseBean
 The most basic interface
 All bean classes must implement it
 A marker interface
 Implementing this interface indicates that the class is an enterprise
bean class
 javax.ejb.EnterpriseBean itself extends java.io.Serializable
 Interfaces
 Session beans, entity beans and message driven bean each have
specific interfaces that extend the javax.ejb.EnterpriseBean
interface
 All session beans must implement javax.ejb.SessionBean
 All entity beans must implement javax.ejb.EntityBean
 All message driven beans must implement
javax.ejb.MessageDrivenBean
 EJB Interfaces
 The session and entity beans must have two interfaces:
 Home Interface
 Remote Interface
 Both these interfaces are declared by the developer of the EJB and
are implemented by the EJB container
 The Home interface has methods to create and destroy EJB objects
 The Remote interface is written using Java Remote Invocation
syntax and declares methods that can be accessed by a remote
client.
Hello.java
// Remote interface
import javax.ejb.*
import java.rmi.*;

public interface Hello extends EJBObject{

public String hello() throws RemoteException;
}
 We extend javax.ejb.EJBObject. This means the container
generated EJB object, will contain every method that EJBObject
interface defines.
 This EJB object implements the Remote interface

 We have one business method hello( ). We need to implement this

method in our enterprise bean class.
 Remote exception indicates networking or other critical problem
HelloHome.java
// Home interface
import javax.ejb.*
import java.rmi.*;
public interface HelloHome extends EJBHome{
public Hello create( ) throws CreateException, RemoteException;
}

 The Home interface has methods to create and destroy EJB objects
 The create() method is a factory method that client uses to reference to an
EJB object.
 The create method is also used to initialize a bean
 create() throws CreateException which indicates some ordinary problem (like
bad parameter) occurred during bean initialization