About EJB Entity Facades

EJB entity facades are classes, paired with XML files, that implement the J2EE Generic Attribute Access pattern, also called the Value Object pattern. EJB entity facades are light-weight wrappers for EJB entity beans that allow you to expose exactly the attributes you need.

EJB entity facades are very similar to BC4J entity objects. In particular:

• EJB entity facades implement the interface oracle.jbo.Entity, allowing you access to the the entity object API.
• EJB entity facades provide a encapsulate business rules. You can implement validation on entity facades the same way you can on entity objects.

However, EJB entity facades are different from entity objects in some important ways:

• Instead of mapping directly to a database table, EJB entity facades map to an EJB entity bean.
• EJB entity facades are used for data shaping. You should include only the EJB attrtibutes your client needs in an EJB entity facade.
• EJB entity facades are available on the client.