Preface

This guide gets you started building Enterprise JavaBeans for Oracle8i. It includes many code examples to help you develop your application.

Who Should Read This Guide?

Anyone developing server-side Enterprise JavaBeans for Oracle8i will benefit from reading this guide. Written especially for programmers, it will also be of value to architects, systems analysts, project managers, and others interested in network-centric database applications. To use this guide effectively, you must have a working knowledge of Java and Oracle8i.

Prerequisite Reading

Before consulting this Guide, you should read the following:

• Oracle8i Java Developer's Guide gives you the technical background information necessary to understand Java in the database server. As well as a comprehensive discussion of the advantages of the JServer implementation for enterprise application development, it explains the fundamentals of the JServer Java virtual machine and gives a technical overview of the tools that JServer provides.

• Sun Microsystems's EJB 1.1 specification as a supplement to this Guide. This guide assumes that you already have a base understanding of the EJB 1.1 specification details.

See "Your Comments Are Welcome" for more sources of information on Enterprise JavaBeans.

Suggested Reading

Books

• Core Java by Cornell & Horstmann, second edition, Volume II (Prentice-Hall, 1997) has good presentations of several Java concepts relevant to EJB. For example, this book documents the Remote Method Invocation (RMI) interface.

• The Developer's Guide to Understanding Enterprise JavaBeans, an overview of EJBs, is available at http://www.Nova-Labs.com.

Online Sources

There are many useful online sources of information about Java. For example, you can view or download guides and tutorials from the Sun Microsystems home page on the Web:

http://www.sun.com

The current 1.1 EJB specification is available at:

http://java.sun.com/products/ejb/docs.html

Another popular Java Web site is:

http://www.gamelan.com

For Java API documentation, see:

http://www.javasoft.com
     


         

A white paper by Anne Thomas of the Patricia Seybold group (paper sponsored by Sun Microsystems) is available at:

http://java.sun.com/products/ejb/white_paper.html

Related Publications

Occasionally, this guide refers you to the following Oracle publications for more information:

Oracle8i Application Developer's Guide - Fundamentals

Oracle8i Java Developer's Guide

Oracle8i JDBC Developer's Guide and Reference

Oracle8i SQL Reference

Oracle8i SQLJ Developer's Guide and Reference

How This Guide Is Organized

This guide consists of the following:

Chapter 1, "Overview", presents a brief overview of the EJB development model from an Oracle8i perspective.

Chapter 2, "Enterprise JavaBeans", discusses EJB development for the Oracle8i server. Although this chapter is not a tutorial on EJB, it contains some of the basic EJB concepts included in the Sun Microsystems specification. The examples focus on a session bean implementation.

Chapter 3, "Configuring IIOP Applications", describes the configuration required to execute an EJB within the database.

Chapter 4, "Entity Beans", describes how to implement an entity bean. This details both a container-managed persistent and a bean-managed persistent model for entity beans.

Chapter 5, "JNDI Connections and Session IIOP Service", covers session management, the session IIOP service and the JNDI namespace. This chapter contains examples and scenarios for accessing EJBs deployed within the server using JNDI and the session IIOP service.

Chapter 6, "IIOP Security", discusses security options for authentication.

Chapter 7, "Transaction Handling", documents the JTA transaction interfaces that you use when developing EJBs.

Appendix A, "XML Deployment Descriptors" describes both the EJB and Oracle-specific deployment descriptors. This appendix contains the full details and semantics for all elements contained within both deployment descriptors.

Appendix B, "Example Code: EJB", includes examples of EJB applications.

Appendix C, "Abbreviations and Acronyms", supplies a convenient list of acronyms.

Notational Conventions

This guide follows these conventions:

Italic	Italic font denotes terms being defined for the first time, words being emphasized, error messages, and book titles.
Courier	Courier font denotes Java program names, file names, path names, and Internet addresses.

Java code examples follow these conventions:

{ }	Braces enclose a block of statements.
//	A double slash begins a single-line comment, which extends to the end of a line.
/* */	A slash-asterisk and an asterisk-slash delimit a multi-line comment, which can span multiple lines.
...	An ellipsis shows that statements or clauses irrelevant to the discussion were left out.
lower case	Lower case is used for keywords and for one-word names of variables, methods, and packages.
UPPER CASE	Upper case is used for names of constants (static final variables) and for names of supplied classes that map to built-in SQL datatypes.
Mixed Case	Mixed case is used for names of classes and interfaces and for multi-word names of variables, methods, and packages. The names of classes and interfaces begin with an upper-case letter. In all multi-word names, the second and succeeding words also begin with an upper-case letter.

Your Comments Are Welcome

We appreciate your comments and suggestions. In fact, your opinions are the most important feedback we receive. We encourage you to use the Reader's Comment Form at the front of this book. You can also send comments to the following address:

Documentation Manager, Oracle8i Java Products Group

Oracle Corporation

500 Oracle Parkway

Redwood Shores, CA 94065

USA

email: [e-mail]

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