Preface
What Is Enterprise JavaBeans?
When Java™ was first introduced, most of the IT industry focused on its graphical user interface characteristics and the competitive advantage it offered in terms of distribution and platform independence. Today, the focus has broadened considerably: Java has been recognized as an excellent platform for creating enterprise solutions, specifically for developing distributed server-side applications. This shift has much to do with Java’s emerging role as a universal language for producing implementation-independent abstractions for common enterprise technologies. The JDBC™ API is the first and most familiar example. JDBC provides a vendor-independent Java interface for accessing SQL relational databases. This abstraction has been so successful that it’s difficult to find a relational database vendor that doesn’t support JDBC. Java abstractions for enterprise technologies have expanded considerably to include JNDI (Java Naming and Directory Interface™) for abstracting directory services, JMX (Java Management Extensions) for abstracting access to computer devices on a network, JMS™ (Java Messaging Service) for abstracting access to different message-oriented middleware products, and so on.
Enterprise JavaBeans™ is the latest technology abstraction in the Java family, and perhaps the most ambitious. Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) provides an abstraction for component transaction monitors (CTMs). Component transaction monitors represent the convergence ...