Accessing the Naming Context

The Enterprise Server provides a naming environment, or context, which is compliant with standard Java EE requirements. A Context object provides the methods for binding names to objects, unbinding names from objects, renaming objects, and listing the bindings. The InitialContext is the handle to the Java EE naming service that application components and clients use for lookups.

The JNDI API also provides subcontext functionality. Much like a directory in a file system, a subcontext is a context within a context. This hierarchical structure permits better organization of information. For naming services that support subcontexts, the Context class also provides methods for creating and destroying subcontexts.

Each resource within the server must have a unique name.

Global JNDI Names

Global JNDI names are assigned according to the following precedence rules:

1. A global JNDI name assigned in the sun-ejb-jar.xml, sun-web.xml deployment descriptor file has the highest precedence. See Mapping References.

2. A global JNDI name assigned in a mapped-name element in the ejb-jar.xml, web.xml deployment descriptor file has the second highest precedence. The following elements have mapped-name subelements: resource-ref, resource-env-ref, ejb-ref, message-destination, message-destination-ref, session, and entity.

3. A global JNDI name assigned in a mappedName attribute of an annotation has the third highest precedence. The following annotations have mappedName attributes: @javax.annotation.Resource, @javax.ejb.EJB, @javax.ejb.Stateless.

4. A default global JNDI name is assigned in some cases if no name is assigned in deployment descriptors or annotations.

   • For component dependencies that must be mapped to global JNDI names, the default is the name of the dependency relative to java:comp/env. For example, in the @Resource(name="jdbc/Foo") DataSource ds; annotation, the global JNDI name is jdbc/Foo.