Develop enterprise beans

 

In selecting a tool for developing enterprise beans, there are two basic approaches, with or without an IDE. The steps in this article explain development without an IDE. Design a J2EE application and the enterprise beans that it needs.

• For general design information, see "Resources for learning."

• Before developing entity beans with container-managed persistence (CMP), read "Concurrency control."

 

Overview

There are two basic approaches to selecting tools for developing enterprise beans:

• You can use one of the available integrated development environments (IDEs). IDE tools automatically generate significant parts of the enterprise bean code and contain integrated tools for packaging and testing enterprise beans. The IBM WebSphere Application Developer product is the recommended IDE. For more information, see the documentation for that product.

• If you have decided to develop enterprise beans without an IDE, we need at least an ASCII text editor. You can also use a Java development tool that does not support enterprise bean development. You can then use tools available in the Java Software Development Kit (SDK) and in WAS to assemble, test, and deploy the beans.

The following steps primarily support the second approach, development without an IDE.

 

Procedure

1. If necessary, migrate any pre-existing code to the required version of the Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) specification.

2. Write and compile the components of the enterprise bean.

   • At a minimum, an EJB 1.1 session bean requires a bean class, a home interface, and a remote interface. An EJB 1.1 entity bean requires a bean class, a primary-key class, a home interface, and a remote interface.

   • At a minimum, an EJB 2.x session bean requires a bean class, a home or local home interface, and a remote or local interface. An EJB 2.x entity bean requires a bean class, a primary-key class, a remote home or local home interface, and a remote or local interface. The types of interfaces go together: If you implement a local interface, define a local home interface as well.

     Optionally, the primary-key class can be unknown. See unknown primary-key class for more information.

   • A message-driven bean requires only a bean class.

3. For each entity bean, complete work to handle persistence operations.

   • Create a database schema for the entity bean's persistent data.

     • For entity beans with container-managed persistence (CMP), store the bean's persistent data in one of the supported databases. The Application Service Toolkit automatically generates SQL code for creating database tables for CMP entity beans. If your CMP beans require complex database mappings, it is recommended that you use the IBM Rational Application Developer product to generate code for the database tables.

     • For entity beans with bean-managed persistence (BMP), you can create the database and database table by using the database tools or use an existing database and database table.

     For more information on creating databases and database tables, consult your database documentation.

      

   • (CMP entity beans for EJB 2.x only) Define finder queries with EJB Query Language (EJB QL).With EJB QL, you define finders in terms of CMP fields and container-managed relationships, as follows:

     • Public finders are visible in the bean's home interface. Implemented in the bean class, they return only remote interfaces and collection types.

     • Private finders, expressed as SELECT statements, are used only within the bean class. They can return both local and remote interfaces, dependent values, other CMP field types, and collection types.

      

   • (CMP entity beans for EJB 1.1 only: an IBM extension) Create a finder helper interface for each CMP entity bean that contains specialized finder methods (other than the findByPrimaryKey method).The following logic is required for each finder method (other than the findByPrimaryKey method) contained in the home interface of an entity bean with CMP:

     • The logic must be defined in a public interface named NameBeanFinderHelper, where Name is the name of the enterprise bean (for example, AccountBeanFinderHelper).

     • The logic must be contained in a String constant named findMethodName WhereClause, where findMethodName is the name of the finder method. The String constant can contain zero or more question marks (?) that are replaced from left to right with the value of the finder method's arguments when that method is called.

 

What to do next

Assemble the beans in one or more EJB modules.

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Developing read-only entity beans

Migrating enterprise bean code to the supported specification

WebSphere extensions to the Enterprise JavaBeans specification

Best practices for developing enterprise beans

Setting the run time for batched commands with JVM arguments

Setting the run time for batched commands with the assembly tools

Setting the run time for deferred create with JVM arguments

Setting the run time for deferred commands with the assembly tools

Setting partial update for container-managed persistent beans

Setting Persistence Manager Cache invalidation

Setting the system property to enable remote EJB clients to receive nested or root-cause exceptions

Unknown primary-key class

Configure a Timer Service

Developing Enterprise JavaBeans 2.1 for the timer service

Web service support

Binding Web modules to virtual hosts

Binding EJB and resource references

Defining data sources for entity beans

Lightweight local operational mode for entity beans

Applying lightweight local mode to an entity bean

 

Related concepts

Enterprise beans
Concurrency control

 

Related tasks

Developing applications that use JNDI

 

Related Reference

Enterprise beans: Resources for learning