Enterprise Java Beans

The iBank application uses a variety of Enterprise Java Beans.

Entity Beans

Bean-managed persistence (Customer bean): allows us to test the following:

• JNDI lookup of initial context

• Pooled data source access via JDBC

• Definition of a BMP custom finder (findByCustUsername())

Container-managed persistence (Account and Branch beans): allow us to test the following:

• Object/Relational mapping with the development tool and within the deployment descriptor

• Use of composite primary keys (Account)

• Definition of custom CMP finders (with the Account bean, and its findOrderedAccountsForCustomer() method). This is the occasion to look at differences in declaring the query logic in the deployment descriptor, and also to have a complex example returning a collection of objects.

Session Beans

Stateless session beans: InterestCalculator allows us to test the following:

• Using and deploying a stateless session bean

• Calling a business method for calculations

Stateful session beans: BankTeller allows us to test the following:

• Looking up various interfaces using JNDI and initial contexts

• Using JDBC to perform database queries

• Using various transactional attributes on bean methods

• Using container-demarcated transactions

• Maintaining conversational state between calls

• Business methods acting as front-ends to entity beans (e.g., the “getAccountSummary()” method)