Special Edition Using Enterprise JavaBeans™ 2.0

Locating Enterprise Beans Using the Home Interface

Before a client can invoke a method on the enterprise bean’s component interface, it must first obtain a reference to the object that implements this interface. The component that is responsible for creating instances of the component interface for an enterprise bean is the bean’s home interface. This is the other Java interface that must be created for every enterprise bean you deploy.

Every enterprise bean that is exposed to a client has a home interface. As you’ll see in Chapter 11, the message-driven bean is not exposed to a client directly and has no component interface. It therefore does not need a home interface. An enterprise bean’s home interface defines the methods that allow clients ...