The EJB server: summary

This topic summarizes the information about EJB servers presented in the previous topics. The following figure shows enterprise bean objects in a CICS® EJB server.

Figure 1. Enterprise bean objects in a CICS EJB server. The EJB container manages and provides services to the enterprise beans contained within it. When a bean is deployed, the deployment tool generates the EJB home and component interface classes.

The home interface is accessible through JNDI and implements lifecycle services for the bean. The client uses it to create, remove, and (for entity beans, not directly supported by CICS) find instances of enterprise beans.

The container creates an EJB component interface object for each instance of the bean. The component interface provides access to the business methods within the bean. It intercepts all business method calls from the client and implements transaction, state management, persistence, and security services for the bean, based on the settings of the bean's deployment descriptor.

The picture shows a CICS EJB server. Within the server is an EJB container. Within the container are a number of CorbaServer execution environments, each containing several enterprise bean instances. A client is connected to the EJB server by an RMI-IIOP link. It issues create and remove commands against the home interface of a bean, and calls the business methods of a bean instance through the bean's component interface.The picture also shows a deployment descriptor containing environment properties and linked to a bean instance.