This course offers the Java programmer a grounding in the Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) architecture and the skills to develop simple EJB applications. EJB’s position at the heart of the Java Enterprise platform and the use of EJB application servers as the backbone of large-scale distributed systems are studied. We consider the advantages of the application server architecture – transaction control, security, persistence, scalability through pooling and clustering – and study the development process for entity and session beans in depth. The J2EE 1.4 reference implementation is used for all demo and lab work, and we emphasize portable EJB 2.1 code.

The focus for this course is on end-to-end connectivity. The course follows a path roughly from the data layer to the presentation layer, so we look at entity beans first, and work demos and exercises in both Bean-Managed and Container-Managed Persistent Beans. Then the EJB session layer is considered, and both stateless and stateful session beans are developed. As part of the lab work, these are hooked to provided JSPs to illustrate the complete system and typical architecture.

NOTE: Our JSP and Servlets courses are excellent companions to this course, and in fact the primary lab track for this course is an extension of the JSP module’s labs. For coverage of intermediate and advanced EJB features including message-driven beans, the 2.x CMP contract, security and transaction features, Web services using EJB, timers, and best practices in EJB development, we recommend our one-week course in EJB

The course software also includes an optional overlay of workspace and project files to support use of the Eclipse IDE in the classroom. (This requires that the instructor be experienced in use of Eclipse and able to walk students through basic tasks in the IDE.)

Java Training Learning Objectives

• Understand the role of Enterprise JavaBeans in enterprise-level systems development, and its relationship to other J2EE technologies such as JSP, servlets, JMS, CORBA, and XML.
• Understand the EJB architecture: the role of the EJB container in mediating contact between the client and the bean, transaction control, authorization control, and the importance of object pooling.
• Understand the development cycle for EJBs: Java source code and compilation, XML deployment descriptors, EJB compilation and deployment, and use by an application server.
• Understand the role of entity beans, their lifecycle and interactions with the container.
• Develop and test BMP and CMP entity beans and understand the importance of each of the entity-bean methods in assisting the container in pooling.
• Understand the role of session beans, their lifecycle and interactions with the container.
• Develop and test stateless and stateful session beans and effectively manage passivation/activation cycles.
• Use the bean context interfaces to assist with persistence code and to correctly establish bean-to-bean communication.

Hardware – minimal

500 MHz, 256 meg RAM, 500 meg disk space.

Hardware – recommended

1.5 GHz, 512 meg RAM, 1 gig disk space

Operating system

Tested on Windows 2000 Professional. Course software should be viable on all systems which support the J2EE 1.4 reference implementation.

Software

All free downloadable tools.