About Container Managed Persistence

Oracle8i manages EJB Entity bean persistence using database tables. Each instance of an entity bean corresponds to a row in the table, and each CMP field corresponds to a column in the table. An Entity bean class also needs a primary key, corresponding to one or more columns of the table, that allow instances to be retrieved using the findByPrimaryKey() method.

Corresponding to the tables are two Business Components for Java components:

• An EJB/8i deployment object, which is very similar to a standard Entity Object and stands for the table that manages persistence
• A view object which selects the relevant columns of the table and aliases them to the EJB fields

CMP beans can also make use of other business components classes: domains that allow EJB fields to be based on Oracle object types and secondary view objects corresponding to EJB finder methods.