2.5 Conclusion

This chapter presented a detailed discussion of EJB applications and enterprise bean types. It defined business entities and processes and showed how architects can implement business rules. It also showed how the various enterprise bean types correlate with the business entities and business processes and how enterprise beans implement the business logic of an application.

Enterprise beans have a defined structure consisting of the enterprise bean class, the client-view API, and the deployment descriptor. Using simple code examples, the chapter explained the home and component interfaces of the client-view API and a typical enterprise bean implementation class. Another example demonstrated the key parts of the deployment descriptor, particularly the information that it contains about each enterprise bean.

Beneath these enterprise beans and applications is the container. It is the container's services and tools that complete the operational environment. The chapter explained the runtime services provided by the container and summarized their benefits.

Chapter 4, Working with Session Beans, brings this theoretical discussion to life, using a real-world enterprise application example.