1 Introduction and Roadmap

This chapter describes the contents and organization of this guide—Developing Enterprise JavaBeans for Oracle WebLogic Server.

This chapter includes the following sections:

• Guide to this Document

• Comprehensive Examples for the EJB Developer

• New and Changed Features in this Release

Guide to this Document

• This chapter, Introduction and Roadmap, introduces the organization of this guide.

• Understanding Enterprise JavaBeans, provides an overview of the new EJB 3.1 features, as well as a brief description of the differences between EJB 3.1 and 3.0.

• Simple Enterprise JavaBeans Examples, provides examples of programming EJBs using the metadata annotations specified by EJB 3.x.

• Iterative Development of Enterprise JavaBeans, describes the EJB implementation process, and provides guidance for how to get an EJB up and running in WebLogic Server.

• Programming the Annotated EJB Class, describes the requirements and typical steps when programming the EJB bean class that contains the metadata annotations.

• Deployment Guidelines for Enterprise JavaBeans, discusses EJB-specific deployment issues and procedures.

• Using an Embedded EJB Container in Oracle WebLogic Server, discusses using an embeddable EJB container in Oracle WebLogic Server.

• Configuring the Persistence Provider in Oracle WebLogic Server, provides an overview of developing an Oracle TopLink application using Oracle WebLogic Server.

• EJB Metadata Annotations Reference, provides reference information for the EJB 3.x metadata annotations, as well as information about standard metadata annotations that are used by EJB.

Comprehensive Examples for the EJB Developer

In addition to this document and the basic examples described in Simple Enterprise JavaBeans Examples,, Oracle provides comprehensive examples in the WebLogic Server distribution kit.

When you install WebLogic Server complete with the examples, the examples source code is placed in the EXAMPLES_HOME directory. The default path is ORACLE_HOME\wlserver\samples\server. From this directory, you can access the source code and instruction files for the examples without having to set up the samples domain. See Sample Applications and Code Examples in Understanding Oracle WebLogic Server.

Oracle recommends that you run these examples before programming your own application that uses EJBs.

EJB 3.2 Examples

Oracle provides Java EE 7 examples that demonstrate new features in EJB 3.2, such as:

• EJB 3.2: Example of Using the Session Bean Lifecyle

• EJB 3.2: Example of a Message-Driven Bean with No-Methods Listener

For more information, see the EJB 3.2 examples in the WebLogic Server distribution kit: EXAMPLES_HOME/examples/src/examples/javaee7/ejb where EXAMPLES_HOME represents the directory in which the WebLogic Server code examples are configured. See Sample Applications and Code Examples in Understanding Oracle WebLogic Server.

EJB 3.1 Examples

Oracle provides Java EE 6 examples that demonstrate new features in EJB 3.1, such as:

• EJB 3.1: Example of a Singleton Session Bean

• EJB 3.1: Example of an Asynchronous Method EJB

• EJB 3.1: Example of a Calendar-based Timer EJB

• EJB 3.1: Example of Simplified No-interface Programming and Packaging in a WAR File

• EJB 3.1: Example of Using a Portable Global JNDI Name in an EJB

For more information, see these examples in the WebLogic Server distribution kit: EXAMPLES_HOME/examples/src/examples/javaee6/ejb where EXAMPLES_HOME represents the directory in which the WebLogic Server code examples are configured. See Sample Applications and Code Examples in Understanding Oracle WebLogic Server.

EJB 3.0 Example

There is also an EJB 3.0 persistence service example, EJB 3.1: Example of Using the Embeddable EJB Container in Java SE, that includes actual business code and provides practical instructions on how to perform key EJB 3.0 development tasks. In particular, the example demonstrates usage of EJB 3.x with:

• Java Persistence API

• Stateless Session Bean

• Message Driven Bean

• Asynchronous JavaScript based browser application

The example uses a persistent domain model for entity EJBs. For more information, see the example in the WebLogic Server distribution kit: EXAMPLES_HOME/examples/src/examples/ejb/ejb30 where EXAMPLES_HOME represents the directory in which the WebLogic Server code examples are configured. See Sample Applications and Code Examples in Understanding Oracle WebLogic Server.

New and Changed Features in this Release

For a comprehensive listing of the new features in EJB 3.1 features introduced in this release of WebLogic Server, see What Is New and Changed in EJB 3.2.