Applied Enterprise JavaBeans™ Technology

Chapter 11. Entity EJBs

Overview

This chapter analyzes entity EJBs in more detail. It starts by describing the life cycle of an entity EJB and how the container manages the instance pool to handle database tables of arbitrary size. This will include a discussion of the container’s manipulation of primary keys, including cases where the primary key is not a simple database field and has to be modelled as a class. We then discuss methods that the container can use to keep the instance variables in sync with the database tables, and the implications these techniques will have on the efficiency of the EJB. This chapter covers those aspects of entity EJB development that are relevant to both bean-managed and container-managed persistence. Later chapters ...