EJB.B.3 Entities and Relationships

The current EJB architecture does not specify how one entity bean should store an object reference of another entity bean. The desirable strategy is application-dependent. The enterprise bean (if the bean uses bean-managed persistence) or the container (if the bean uses container-managed persistence) can use any of the following strategies for maintaining persistently a relationship between entities (the list is not inclusive of all possible strategies):

• Object's primary key. This is applicable if the target object's home is known and fixed.

• Home name and object's primary key.

• Home object reference and object's primary key.

• Object's handle.