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Chapter
11
11Writing enterprise bean clients
Chapter
Important
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Client view of an enterprise bean
A client of an enterprise bean is an application, a stand-alone application, an
application client container, servlet, or applet--or another enterprise bean. In all cases,
the client must do the following things to use an enterprise bean:
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Locate the bean's home interface. The EJB specification states that the client
should use the JNDI (Java Naming and Directory Interface) API to locate home
interfaces.
Obtain a reference to an enterprise bean object's remote interface. This involves
using methods defined on the bean's home interface. You can either create a
session bean, or you can create or find an entity bean.
Invoke one or more methods defined by the enterprise bean. A client does not
directly invoke the methods defined by the enterprise bean. Instead, the client
invokes the methods on the enterprise bean object's remote interface. The methods
defined in the remote interface are the methods that the enterprise bean has
exposed to clients.
Initializing the client
The SortClient application imports the necessary JNDI classes and the SortBean home
and remote interfaces. The client uses the JNDI API to locate an enterprise bean's
home interface.
A client application can also use logical names (as recommended in the various J2EE
specifications) to access resources such as database connections, remote enterprise
beans, and environment variables. The container, per the J2EE specification, exposes
these resources as administered objects in the local JNDI name space (that is,
java:comp/env).
Chapter 11: Writing enterprise bean clients 85