EJB Architecture and Design

R. Praveen.

What is EJB?
An EJB is just a collection of Java classes and XML file, bundled into a single unit. The Java classes must follow certain rules and provide certain callback methods. EJB is just a specification. It is not a product. EJBs are reusable components.

What is EJB?
EJB is a widely-adopted server-side component architecture for J2EE. EJB components are designed to encapsulate business logic, and to protect the application developer from having to worry about system level issues.

Contents
Services provided by EJB container Circumstances of EJB component usage How an EJB component looks like? View of an EJB component by client programmer and EJB developer Mechanisms by which EJB container provides its services Rules an EJB developer must follow and how to use EJBs in a web architecture?

Key features of EJB technology

EJB components are server-side components written entirely in the Java programming language EJB components contain business logic only - no System-level programming System-level services (i.e. "plumbing") such as transactions, security, Life-cycle, threading, persistence, etc. are automatically managed for the EJB component by the EJB server

Key features of EJB technology

EJB architecture is inherently transactional, distributed, portable, multi-tier, scalable and secure EJB components are fully portable across any EJB server and any OS, work with any client. Components are declaratively customized There are four major parts to every bean: the home interface, the remote interface, the implementation class and the XML deployment descriptor

EJB vs JavaBeans
The JavaBeans architecture is meant to provide a format for general-purpose components whereas the EJB architecture provides a format for encapsulation and management of business logic. JavaBeans has tier of execution at Client and EJB has at Server (specifically business logic tier)

EJB vs JavaBeans
In JavaBeans the runtime execution environment provides services like Java libraries, Java application etc. The EJB runtime environment provides services of Persistence, declarative transactions and security, connection pooling and lifecycle services.

Varieties of Beans
Session Beans Stateful session bean Stateless session bean Entity Beans With container-managed persistence With bean-managed persistence Message-Driven Beans

Why use EJBs in your design?

EJB specification provides enterprise-level services, that is, it provides software services that are fundamental to an organizations purpose. EJBs API was designed to keep the application programmer from having to provide systemslevel services, so that they are free to concentrate on business logic.

Why use EJBs in your design?

A requirement of any of the services provided by an EJB container like transactions, scalability, persistence, security, future growth possibilities is an appropriate reason to use EJB in the design of the application.

EJB Architecture
Client Application Logic J2EE Application Server
RDBMS

Data

EJB Container Client

Application Java Mail JDBC

Corba JMS JTA

RMI

Session Bean Entity Bean

Mail

Roles in EJB Development

EJB provider - a person who develops EJB Components EJB Deployer - a person responsible for deploying EJBs in EJB server Application Server/ EJB Container Vendor - one who provides application server on which the application is deployed

Roles in EJB Development

Application assembler - one who combine the EJB components with other software to make a complete application System administrator - one who manages the application after it has been deployed into a target environment.

Roles in EJB Development

EJB Provider Application Assembler
App Server/ EJB Container Provider

Deployer

System Administrator

EJB Container and its Services

A container is an execution environment for a component. The component lives in the container and the container provides the services for the component. Similarly, a container lives in an application server, which provides an execution environment for it and other containers.

Services provided by an EJB container Persistence Ex: simple connection pooling, automatic persistence, etc. EJBs created with application development tools will encapsulate data access in components.

Services provided by an EJB container

Declarative transactions Data caching Declarative Security Error Handling Component Framework for Business Logic Scalability and Fall-Over Portability Manageability

How the Container Provides Services

There are three basic ideas: First, there are clearly defined responsibilities between the various parts of an application using EJB component namely the client, the EJB container and the EJB component. The definition of these responsibilities is formally known as a contract. Second, the services that the container provides are defined in such a way that they are orthogonal to the component. In other words, security, persistence, transactions are separate from the Java files that implement the business logic of the component.

How the Container Provides Services Third, the container interposes on each and every call to an EJB component so that it can provide its services. In other words, the container puts itself between the client and the component on every single business method call.

Contracts
EJB Container/Application Server

Enterprise JavaBean

Client

Rules for the bean programmer

The developer of the EJB component must implement the business methods in the implementation class The bean provider must implement the ejbCreate(), ejbPostCreate(),ejbRemove() methods and the ejbFind<METHOD>() methods if the bean is an entity with bean managed persistence The bean provider must define the enterprise beans home and remote interfaces For session beans, the bean provider must implement the container callbacks defined in the javax.ejb.SessionBean interface

Rules for the bean programmer

For entity beans, the provider must implement the container callbacks defined in the javax.ejb.EntityBean interface The bean provider must not use programming practices that would interfere with the containers runtime management of the enterprise bean instances

Interposition : method call to an EJB Container from a remote client

First, the client makes a call on the RMI stub This RMI stub interposes on the method call in order to marshal parameters and send the information across the network A skeleton on the server side unmarshals the parameters and delivers them to the EJB Container

Interposition diagram

Client

RMI Stub

Network

RMI Stub

Container generated class

EJB

Interposition class

Interposition : from EJB Container to EJBs

The container will examine the security credentials of the caller of the method It will start or join with any required transactions It will make any necessary calls to persistence functions It will trigger various callbacks to allow the EJB Component to acquire resources Only after all this is done will the actual business method be called Once it is called, the container will do some more work with transactions, persistence, callbacks and returns data or exception to the remote client

Working with EJBs

The Enterprise JavaBeans specification is written for three audiences: The Client developer The EJB developer The EJB container developer

EJB Clients
EJB Clients are applications that access EJB components in EJB containers. There are two possible types. The first category is application clients which are stand-alone applications accessing the EJB components using the RMI-IIOP protocol. The second category of application clients are components in the web container. They are java servlets and JSPs which also access the EJB components via the RMI-IIOP protocol.

The Client Developers View

The client has a smaller set of concerns then a bean developer with regard to using EJBs. Basically, he need to know : how to find or create a bean, how to use its methods and how to release its resources The client need not worry about the implementation of the EJB, callbacks that the EJB container will make on the EJB or nature of the services provided to the EJB.

EJBs interface
Home Interface : It is primarily for the life cycle operations of the bean: creating, finding, and removing EJBs. The home interface is not associated with a particular bean, just with a type of bean. Remote Interface : It is for business methods. Logically, it represents a particular bean on the server. The remote interface also provides some infrastructure methods associated with a bean instance, rather than a bean type.

Sample client application pseudo code

A client programmer will acquire an EJBs home interface through JNDI, and they use this home interface to :

Create or find instance of bean

Execute methods

Reference (Handle)

Remove bean

The Bean Programmers view

Main responsibility is write business logic and structure the code in a particular structure. The structure has 4 files, the home interface, remote interface, business logic class file and the XML file. The XML file called the deployment descriptor, contains the structural information about the bean, declares the beans external dependencies and specifies certain information about how services such as transaction and security work.

Structure of JAR file

META -INF\ ejb-jar.xml orderMgmt\ OrderManagement.class OrderManagementHome.class OrderManagementBean.class

What you cant do in an EJB component?

You cannot use Reflection API to access information inaccessible to you. You cannot create a class loader or replace a security manager. You cannot set the socket factory used by ServerSocket or Socket You cannot use the object substitution features of the serialization protocol

What you cant do in an EJB component?

use Threads or the Threading API use the AWT Act as a Network Server

use Read/Write static fields use java.io package Load a native library use this as an Argument or Return value use Loopback Calls

EJB Components on the Web

Three classes of objects in MVC architecture: Model : This is the data and business-logic component. It can serve multiple views. View : This is the presentation component or the user-interface component. There can be different presentations of a single model. Controller : This is the component that responds to user input. Translates user-interface events into changes to the model and defines the way the user-interface reacts to those events.