Java Reference
In-Depth Information
1.1.4. Why choose EJB 3?
At the beginning of this chapter, we hinted at EJB's status as a pioneering technology. EJB
is a groundbreaking technology that raised the standards of server-side development. Just
like Java itself, EJB changed things in ways that are here to stay and inspired many in-
novations. Up until a few years ago, the only serious competition to EJB came from the
Microsoft .NET framework. In this section, we'll point out a few of the compelling EJB 3
features that we feel certain will have this latest version at the top of your short list.
Ease of use
Thanks to the unwavering focus on ease of use, EJB 3 is probably the simplest server-side
development platform around. The features that shine the brightest are POJO program-
ming, annotations in favor of verbose XML, heavy use of sensible defaults, and avoid-
ance of complex paradigms. Although the number of EJB services is significant, you'll find
them very intuitive. For the most part, EJB 3 has a practical outlook on things and doesn't
demand that you understand the theoretical intricacies. In fact, most EJB services are de-
signed to give you a break from this mode of thinking so you can focus on getting the job
done and go home at the end of the day knowing you accomplished something.
Complete, integrated solution stack
EJB 3 offers a complete stack of server-side solutions, including transactions, security,
messaging, scheduling, remoting, web services, asynchronous processing, testing, depend-
ency injection, and interceptors. This means that you won't have to spend a lot of time
looking for third-party tools to integrate into your application. These services are also just
there for you—you don't have to do anything to explicitly enable them. This leads to near-
zero configuration systems.
In addition, EJB 3 provides seamless integration with other Java EE technologies, such
as CDI, JPA, JDBC, JavaMail, Java Transaction API (JTA), JMS, Java Authentication
and Authorization Service (JAAS), Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI), Remote
Method Invocation (RMI), and so on. EJB is also guaranteed to seamlessly integrate with
presentation-tier technologies like JSP, Servlets, and JSF. When needed, you can integrate
third-party tools with EJB using CDI.
