Understanding Entity Bean Data Bindings

In addition to providing business components that implement J2EE design patterns while binding directly to database objects, Oracle9i JDeveloper uses BC4J technology to provide a set of bindings for EJB entity beans.

Entity bean data bindings are based on EJB entity beans, just as other business components are based on database objects. Creating an entity bean data binding layer on top of your EJB entity beans has the following advantages:

• Entity bean data bindings implement Sun's J2EE design patterns. Using entity bean data bindings saves you the effort of implementing these patterns yourself, allowing you to concentrate on your application's business logic. For more information about J2EE design patterns, see http://java.sun.com/patterns/j2ee_patterns/index.html.
• Entity bean data bindings support much of the BC4J API, allowing easy programmatic access to your data.
• You can use entity bean data bindings as a back end for any of Oracle's BC4J client architectures, such as JSP Pages for Business Components.

JDeveloper provides the following entity bean data bindings:

• EJB entity facades, which implement the J2EE Generic Attribute Access pattern.
• EJB finder view objects, which implement the J2EE Value List Handler pattern.
• EJB finder view links, which join EJB finder view objects in master-detail relationships.
• EJB application modules, which implement the J2EE Session Facade pattern.

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