Part 1. Overview of the EJB landscape

This book is about Enterprise Java Beans (EJB) 3, and covers up to the EJB 3.2 specification. The goal of EJB 3.2 is to continue to evolve the EJB specification to be a complete solution for all Enterprise business needs and to improve the EJB architecture by reducing its complexity from the developer’s point of view.

Part 1 presents EJB 3 as a powerful, highly usable platform worthy of its place as the business component development standard for mission-critical Enterprise development. We’ll introduce the Java Persistence API (JPA 2.1), a Java EE technology that aims to standardize Java ORM and works hand-in-hand with EJB 3. We’ll also take a quick look at Contexts and Dependency Injection for Java (CDI 1.1), the next-generation generic type-safe dependency injection technology for Java EE.

In chapter 1 we introduce the pieces that make up EJB 3, touching on the unique strengths EJB has as a development platform and the new features that promote productivity and ease of use. We even throw in a “Hello World” example.

In chapter 2 we provide more realistic code samples and introduce the Action-Bazaar application, an imaginary Enterprise system developed throughout the book. We’ll try to give you a feel for how EJB 3 looks as quickly and easily as possible. Be ready for a lot of code!