Foreign cell bindings

If we have applications in a cell that access other applications in another cell, we can configure a foreign cell name binding for the other cell. A foreign cell name binding is a context binding that resolves to the Cell Root context of the other cell. All applications in the local cell can look up objects in the foreign cell through the foreign cell binding.

Foreign cell bindings limit bootstrap address information for a foreign cell to a single location, instead of placing in the local cell's application deployment data the bootstrap address information contained in every foreign cell reference. If the bootstrap address for the foreign cell changes, we only need to update the foreign cell binding. You do not need to update the deployment data for any application in the local cell that looks up application objects in the foreign cell through the foreign cell binding.

For example, assume the foreign cell CellB has a cell-scoped EJB namespace binding configured with a name in the namespace of ejb/AccountHome. Applications running in CellB would look up the home with a JNDI name of cell/persistent/ejb/AccountHome. (J2EE applications would actually use a java:comp/env name that maps to that JNDI name through deployment descriptor data.) If we configure a foreign cell binding to CellB in the local cell, applications running in the local cell can look up AccountHome with a JNDI name of cell/cells/CellB/persistent/ejb/AccountHome. In both lookup names, the suffix persistent/ejb/AccountHome is relative to the Cell Root context in CellB.

The foreign cell and the local cell must have different names.

Related concepts

Naming

Related tasks

Configure foreign cell bindings

Use naming