Java Persistence Entities

For each business entity represented in our simple bank, the Duke’s Bank application has a matching Java Persistence API entity:

• Account

• Customer

• Tx

The purpose of these entities is to provide an object view of these database tables: bank_account, bank_customer, and bank_tx. For each column in a table, the corresponding entity has an instance variable. Because they use the Java Persistence API, the entities contain no SQL statements that access the tables. The enterprise bean container manages all data in the underlying data source, including adding, updating, and deleting data from the database tables.

Unlike the session beans, the entities do not validate method parameters. The session beans check the parameters and throw the application exceptions, such as CustomerNotInAccountException and IllegalAccountTypeException. Consequently, if some other application were to include these entities, its session beans would also have to validate the method parameters. Validation code was not added to the entity’s methods, in order to keep the business logic separate from the entity data.