Enterprise JavaBeans

RMI is a distributed object API. It specifies how to write objects so that they can talk to each other no matter where on the network they are found. I could write dozens of business objects that can, in principal, talk to your business objects using RMI. At its core, however, RMI is nothing more than an API to which your distributed objects must conform. RMI says nothing about other characteristics normally required of an enterprise-class distributed environment. For example, it says nothing about how a client might perform a search for RMI objects matching some criteria. It also says nothing about how those objects might work together to construct a single transaction.

What is missing from the picture is a distributed component model. A component model is a standard that defines how components are written so that systems can be built from components by different authors with little or no customization. You may be familiar with the JavaBeans component model. It is a component model that defines how you write user interface components so that they may be plugged into third-party applications. The magic thing about JavaBeans is that there is very little API behind the specification; you neither implement nor extend any special classes and you need call no special methods. The force of JavaBeans is largely in conformance with an established naming convention.

Enterprise JavaBeans is a more complex extension of this concept. While there are API elements behind Enterprise ...

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