13.5 IBM EJB extensions: EJB access intents

Access intents are used to optimize the access to relational data. Access intents are only applicable to EJB 2.x beans. For EJB 1.1 beans, you still use the old method of setting the transaction isolation level at the method level, as well as mark methods as read-only. In this section, we only cover access intents for EJB 2.x beans.

Access intent policies are specifically designed to supplant the use of isolation level and read-only, method-level modifiers found in the extended deployment descriptor for EJB V1.1 enterprise beans. You cannot specify isolation level and read-only modifiers for EJB V2.x enterprise beans. The WebSphere persistence manager uses access intent hints to make decisions about isolation level, cursor management, and more.