Chapter 10: Web Services and Scheduling

Introduction

This chapter is concerned with two additional services and technologies that are offered as part of the EJB 2.1 specification: web services and timers. Web services, the major new feature in the EJB 2.1 specification, are a technology that allows for integration and interoperability between heterogeneous systems using standard protocols and XML documents. Web services allow integration between EJB and non-EJB systems (including non-Java systems such as Microsoft .NET). In this chapter we convert one of our existing EJB components into a web service and utilize a web service located outside of our local EJB system. Since EJB 1.0 there have been available numerous products to schedule and trigger notifications within the EJB system. With EJB 2.1, the timer service is now standardized, and in the future it will be the common approach for the scheduling of EJB invocations and batch jobs at specified regular or irregular intervals within the EJB system.