EJB Interview Questions

Q: What are the different kinds of enterprise beans?

A: Stateless session bean- An instance of these non-persistent EJBs provides a
service without storing an interaction or conversation state between methods. Any
instance can be used for any client.

Stateful session bean- An instance of these non-persistent EJBs maintains state

across methods and transactions. Each instance is associated with a particular
client.

Entity bean- An instance of these persistent EJBs represents an object view of

the data, usually rows in a database. They have a primary key as a unique
identifier. Entity bean persistence can be either container-managed or bean-
managed.

Message-driven bean- An instance of these EJBs is integrated with the Java

Message Service (JMS) to provide the ability for message-driven beans to act as a
standard JMS message consumer and perform asynchronous processing between
the server and the JMS message producer.

Q: What is Session Bean?

A: A session bean is a non-persistent object that implements some business logic
running on the server. One way to think of a session object is as a logical
extension of the client program that runs on the server.

Session beans are used to manage the interactions of entity and other session
beans,access resources, and generally perform tasks on behalf of the client.

There are two basic kinds of session bean: stateless and stateful.

Stateless session beans are made up of business methods that behave like
procedures; they operate only on the arguments passed to them when they are
invoked. Stateless beans are called stateless because they are transient; they do
not maintain business state between method invocations.Each invocation of a
stateless business method is independent from previous invocations. Because
stateless session beans are stateless, they are easier for the EJB container to
manage, so they tend to process requests faster and use less resources.

Stateful session beans encapsulate business logic and state specific to a client.
Stateful beans are called "stateful" because they do maintain business state
between method invocations, held in memory and not persistent. Unlike stateless
session beans, clients do not share stateful beans. When a client creates a stateful
bean, that bean instance is dedicated to service only that client. This makes it
possible to maintain conversational state, which is business state that can be
shared by methods in the same stateful bean.

Q: What is Entity Bean?

A: The entity bean is used to represent data in the database. It provides an object-
oriented interface to data that would normally be accessed by the JDBC or some
other back-end API. More than that, entity beans provide a component model that
 allows bean developers to focus their attention on the business logic of the bean,
while the container takes care of managing persistence,transactions, and access
control.

There are two basic kinds of entity beans: container-managed ersistence (CMP)
andbean-managed persistence (BMP).

Container-managed persistence beans are the simplest for the bean developer to
create and the most difficult for the EJB server to support. This is because all the
logic for synchronizing the bean's state with the database is handled automatically
by the container. This means that the bean developer doesn't need to write any
data access logic, while the EJB server is
supposed to take care of all the persistence needs automatically. With CMP, the
container manages the persistence of the entity bean. Vendor tools are used to
map the entity fields to the database and absolutely no database access code is
written in the bean class.

The bean-managed persistence (BMP) enterprise bean manages synchronizing its

state with the database as directed by the container. The bean uses a database
API to read and write its fields to the database, but the container tells it when to
do each synchronization operation and manages the transactions for the bean
automatically. Bean-managed persistence gives the bean developer the flexibility
to perform persistence operations that are too complicated for the container or to
use a data source that is not supported by the container.

Q: What are the methods of Entity Bean?

A: An entity bean consists of 4 groups of methods:

1. create methods: To create a new instance of a CMP entity bean, and therefore
insert data into the database, the create() method on the bean's home interface
must be invoked. They look like this: EntityBeanClass ejbCreateXXX(parameters),
where EntityBeanClass is an Entity Bean you are trying to instantiate,
ejbCreateXXX(parameters) methods are used for creating Entity Bean instances
according to the parameters specified and to some programmer-defined
conditions.

A bean's home interface may declare zero or more create() methods, each of
which must have corresponding ejbCreate() and ejbPostCreate() methods in the
bean class. These creation methods are linked at run time, so that when a create()
method is invoked on the home interface, the container delegates the invocation
to the corresponding ejbCreate() and ejbPostCreate() methods on the bean class.

2. finder methods: The methods in the home interface that begin with "find" are
called the find methods. These are used to query the EJB server for specific entity
beans, based on the name of the method and arguments passed. Unfortunately,
there is no standard query language defined for find methods, so each vendor will
implement the find method differently. In CMP entity beans, the find methods are
not implemented with matching methods in the bean class; containers implement
them when the bean is deployed in a vendor specific manner. The deployer will use
vendor specific tools to tell the container how a particular find method should
behave. Some vendors will use object-relational mapping tools to define the
behavior of a find method while others will simply require the deployer to enter
the appropriate SQL command.
 There are two basic kinds of find methods: single-entity and multi-entity. Single-
entity find methods return a remote reference to the one specific entity bean that
matches the find request. If no entity beans are found, the method throws an
ObjectNotFoundException . Every entity bean must define the single-entity find
method with the method name findByPrimaryKey(), which takes the bean's
primary key type as an argument.

The multi-entity find methods return a collection ( Enumeration or Collection type)

of entities that match the find request. If no entities are found, the multi-entity
find returns an empty collection.

3. remove methods: These methods (you may have up to 2 remove methods, or

don't have them at all) allow the client to physically remove Entity beans by
specifying either Handle or a Primary Key for the Entity Bean.

4. home methods: These methods are designed and implemented by a

developer, and EJB specification doesn't have any requirements for them except
the need to throw a RemoteException is each home method.

Q: What is the difference between Container-Managed Persistent (CMP) bean

and Bean-Managed Persistent(BMP) ?
A: Container-managed persistence beans are the simplest for the bean developer to
create and the most difficult for the EJB server to support. This is because all the
logic for synchronizing the bean's state with the database is handled
automatically by the container. This means that the bean developer doesn't need
to write any data access logic, while the EJB server is supposed to take care of all
the persistence needs automatically. With CMP, the container manages the
persistence of the entity bean. A CMP bean developer doesn't need to worry
about JDBC code and transactions, because the Container performs database
calls and transaction management instead of the programmer. Vendor tools are
used to map the entity fields to the database and absolutely no database access
code is written in the bean class. All table mapping is specified in the deployment
descriptor. Otherwise, a BMP bean developer takes the load of linking an
application and a database on his shoulders.

The bean-managed persistence (BMP) enterprise bean manages synchronizing its

state with the database as directed by the container. The bean uses a database
API to read and write its fields to the database, but the container tells it when to
do each synchronization operation and manages the transactions for the bean
automatically. Bean-managed persistence gives the bean developer the flexibility
to perform persistence operations that are too complicated for the container or to
use a data source that is not supported by the container.BMP beans are not 100%
database-independent, because they may contain database-specific code, but
CMP beans are unable to perform complicated DML (data manipulation language)
statements. EJB 2.0 specification introduced some new ways of querying
database (by using the EJB QL - query language).

Q: What are the callback methods in Entity beans?

A: The bean class defines create methods that match methods in the home interface
and business methods that match methods in the remote interface. The bean class
also implements a set of callback methods that allow the container to notify the
bean of events in its life cycle. The callback methods are defined in the
javax.ejb.EntityBean interface that is implemented by all entity beans.The
EntityBean interface has the following definition. Notice that the bean class
implements these methods.

public interface javax.ejb.EntityBean {

public void setEntityContext();
public void unsetEntityContext();
public void ejbLoad();
public void ejbStore();
public void ejbActivate();
public void ejbPassivate();
public void ejbRemove();
}
The setEntityContext() method provides the bean with an interface to the
container called the EntityContext. The EntityContext interface contains methods
for obtaining information about the context under which the bean is operating at
any particular moment. The EntityContext interface is used to access security
information about the caller; to determine the status of the current transaction or
to force a transaction rollback; or to get a reference to the bean itself, its home, or
its primary key. The EntityContext is set only once in the life of an entity bean
instance, so its reference should be put into one of the bean instance's fields if it
will be needed later.

The unsetEntityContext() method is used at the end of the bean's life cycle
before the instance is evicted from memory to dereference the EntityContext and
perform any last-minute clean-up.

The ejbLoad() and ejbStore() methods in CMP entities are invoked when the
entity bean's state is being synchronized with the database. The ejbLoad() is
invoked just after the container has refreshed the bean container-managed fields
with its state from the database. The ejbStore() method is invoked just before the
container is about to write the bean container-managed fields to the database.
These methods are used to modify data as it's being synchronized. This is common
when the data stored in the database is different than the data used in the bean
fields.

The ejbPassivate() and ejbActivate() methods are invoked on the bean by the
container just before the bean is passivated and just after the bean is activated,
respectively. Passivation in entity beans means that the bean instance is
disassociated with its remote reference so that the container can evict it from
memory or reuse it. It's a resource conservation measure the container employs
to reduce the number of instances in memory. A bean might be passivated if it
hasn't been used for a while or as a normal operation performed by the container
to maximize reuse of resources. Some containers will evict beans from memory,
while others will reuse instances for other more active remote references. The
ejbPassivate() and ejbActivate() methods provide the bean with a notification as to
when it's about to be passivated (disassociated with the remote reference) or
activated (associated with a remote reference).
Q: What is software architecture of EJB?
A: Session and Entity EJBs consist of 4 and 5 parts respetively:

1. A remote interface (a client interacts with it),

2. A home interface (used for creating objects and for declaring business
methods),

3. A bean object (an object, which actually performs business logic and EJB-
specific operations).

4. A deployment descriptor (an XML file containing all information required for
maintaining the EJB) or a set of deployment descriptors (if you are using some
container-specific features).

5.A Primary Key class - is only Entity bean specific.

Q: Can Entity Beans have no create() methods?

A: Yes. In some cases the data is inserted NOT using Java application, so you may
only need to retrieve the information, perform its processing, but not create your
own information of this kind.

Q: What is bean managed transaction?

A: If a developer doesn't want a Container to manage transactions, it's possible to
implement all database operations manually by writing the appropriate JDBC code.
This often leads to productivity increase, but it makes an Entity Bean incompatible
with some databases and it enlarges the amount of code to be written. All
transaction management is explicitly performed by a developer.

Q: What are transaction attributes?

A: The transaction attribute specifies how the Container must manage transactions
for a method when a client invokes the method via the enterprise bean’s home or
component interface or when the method is invoked as the result of the arrival of
a JMS message. (Sun's EJB Specification) Below is a list of transactional attributes:

1. NotSupported - transaction context is unspecified.

2. Required - bean's method invocation is made within a transactional context. If

a client is not associated with a transaction, a new transaction is invoked
automatically.

3. Supports - if a transactional context exists, a Container acts like the

transaction attribute is Required, else - like NotSupported.

4. RequiresNew - a method is invoked in a new transaction context.

5. Mandatory - if a transactional context exists, a Container acts like the

 transaction attribute is Required, else it throws a
javax.ejb.TransactionRequiredException.

6. Never - a method executes only if no transaction context is specified.

Q: What are transaction isolation levels in EJB?

A: 1. Transaction_read_uncommitted- Allows a method to read uncommitted
data from a DB(fast but not wise).

2. Transaction_read_committed- Guarantees that the data you are getting has

been committed.

3. Transaction_repeatable_read - Guarantees that all reads of the database

will be the same during the transaction (good for read and update operations).

4. Transaction_serializable- All the transactions for resource are performed

serial.

EJB Interview Questions

Q: How EJB Invocation happens?

A: Step 1: Retrieve Home Object reference from Naming Service via JNDI.
step 2: Return Home Object reference to the client.
step 3: Create me a new EJB Object through Home Object interface.
step 4: Create EJB Object from the Ejb Object
step 5: Return EJB Object reference to the client.
step 6: Invoke business method using EJB Object reference.
step 7: Delegate request to Bean (Enterprise Bean).

Q: Is it possible to share an HttpSession between a JSP and EJB? What

happens when I change a value in the HttpSession from inside an EJB?
A: You can pass the HttpSession as parameter to an EJB method, only if all objects
in session are serializable.This has to be consider as ?passed-by-value", that
means that it?s read-only in the EJB. If anything is altered from inside the EJB, it
won?t be reflected back to the HttpSession of the Servlet Container.The ?pass-by-
reference? can be used between EJBs Remote Interfaces, as they are remote
references. While it IS possible to pass an HttpSession as a parameter to an EJB
object, it is considered to be ?bad practice ? in terms of object oriented design.
This is because you are creating an unnecessary coupling between back-end
objects (ejbs) and front-end objects (HttpSession). Create a higher-level of
abstraction for your ejb?s api. Rather than passing the whole, fat, HttpSession
(which carries with it a bunch of http semantics), create a class that acts as a
value object (or structure) that holds all the data you need to pass back and forth
between front-end/back-end. Consider the case where your ejb needs to support a
non-http-based client. This higher level of abstraction will be flexible enough to
support it.

Q: The EJB container implements the EJBHome and EJBObject classes. For
 every request from a unique client, does the container create a separate
instance of the generated EJBHome and EJBObject classes?
A: The EJB container maintains an instance pool. The container uses these instances
for the EJB Home reference irrespective of the client request. while refering the
EJB Object classes the container creates a separate instance for each client
request. The instance pool maintainence is up to the implementation of the
container. If the container provides one, it is available otherwise it is not
mandatory for the provider to implement it. Having said that, yes most of the
container providers implement the pooling functionality to increase the
performance of the application server. The way it is implemented is again up to the
implementer.

Q: Can the primary key in the entity bean be a Java primitive type such as
int?
A: The primary key can't be a primitive type--use the primitive wrapper classes,
instead. For example, you can use java.lang.Integer as the primary key class, but
not int (it has to be a class, not a primitive)

Q: Can you control when passivation occurs?

A: The developer, according to the specification, cannot directly control when
passivation occurs. Although for Stateful Session Beans, the container cannot
passivate an instance that is inside a transaction. So using transactions can be a a
strategy to control passivation.

The ejbPassivate() method is called during passivation, so the developer has

control over what to do during this exercise and can implement the require
optimized logic.

Some EJB containers, such as BEA WebLogic, provide the ability to tune the
container to minimize passivation calls.

Taken from the WebLogic 6.0 DTD -"The passivation-strategy can be either
"default" or "transaction". With the default setting the container will attempt to
keep a working set of beans in the cache. With the "transaction" setting, the
container will passivate the bean after every transaction (or method call for a non-
transactional invocation).

Q: What is the advantage of using Entity bean for database operations, over
directly using JDBC API to do database operations? When would I use one
over the other?
A: Entity Beans actually represents the data in a database. It is not that Entity Beans
replaces JDBC API. There are two types of Entity Beans Container Managed and
Bean Mananged. In Container Managed Entity Bean - Whenever the instance of
the bean is created the container automatically retrieves the data from the
DB/Persistance storage and assigns to the object variables in bean for user to
manipulate or use them. For this the developer needs to map the fields in the
database to the variables in deployment descriptor files (which varies for each
vendor).

In the Bean Managed Entity Bean - The developer has to specifically make
connection, retrive values, assign them to the objects in the ejbLoad() which will
be called by the container when it instatiates a bean object. Similarly in the
 ejbStore() the container saves the object values back the the persistance storage.
ejbLoad and ejbStore are callback methods and can be only invoked by the
container. Apart from this, when you use Entity beans you dont need to worry
about database transaction handling, database connection pooling etc. which are
taken care by the ejb container. But in case of JDBC you have to explicitly do the
above features. what suresh told is exactly perfect. ofcourse, this comes under the
database transations, but i want to add this. the great thing about the entity
beans of container managed, whenever the connection is failed during the
transaction processing, the database consistancy is mantained automatically. the
container writes the data stored at persistant storage of the entity beans to the
database again to provide the database consistancy. where as in jdbc api, we,
developers has to do manually.

Q: What is EJB QL?

A: EJB QL is a Query Language provided for navigation across a network of enterprise
beans and dependent objects defined by means of container managed persistence.
EJB QL is introduced in the EJB 2.0 specification. The EJB QL query language
defines finder methods for entity beans with container managed persistenceand is
portable across containers and persistence managers. EJB QL is used for queries
of two types of finder methods: Finder methods that are defined in the home
interface of an entity bean and which return entity objects. Select methods, which
are not exposed to the client, but which are used by the Bean Provider to select
persistent values that are maintained by the Persistence Manager or to select
entity objects that are related to the entity bean on which the query is defined.

Q: Brief description about local interfaces?

A: EEJB was originally designed around remote invocation using the Java Remote
Method Invocation (RMI) mechanism, and later extended to support to standard
CORBA transport for these calls using RMI/IIOP. This design allowed for maximum
flexibility in developing applications without consideration for the deployment
scenario, and was a strong feature in support of a goal of component reuse in
J2EE.

Many developers are using EJBs locally -- that is, some or all of their EJB calls are
between beans in a single container.

With this feedback in mind, the EJB 2.0 expert group has created a local interface
mechanism. The local interface may be defined for a bean during development, to
allow streamlined calls to the bean if a caller is in the same container. This does
not involve the overhead involved with RMI like marshalling etc. This facility will
thus improve the performance of applications in which co-location is planned.

Local interfaces also provide the foundation for container-managed relationships

among entity beans with container-managed persistence.

Q: What are the special design care that must be taken when you work with
local interfaces?
A: EIt is important to understand that the calling semantics of local interfaces are
different from those of remote interfaces. For example, remote interfaces pass
parameters using call-by-value semantics, while local interfaces use call-by-
reference.

This means that in order to use local interfaces safely, application developers need
to carefully consider potential deployment scenarios up front, then decide which
interfaces can be local and which remote, and finally, develop the application code
with these choices in mind.

While EJB 2.0 local interfaces are extremely useful in some situations, the long-
term costs of these choices, especially when changing requirements and
component reuse are taken into account, need to be factored into the design
decision.

Q: What happens if remove( ) is never invoked on a session bean?

A: In case of a stateless session bean it may not matter if we call or not as in both
cases nothing is done. The number of beans in cache is managed by the container.

In case of stateful session bean, the bean may be kept in cache till either the
session times out, in which case the bean is removed or when there is a
requirement for memory in which case the data is cached and the bean is sent to
free pool.

Q: What is the difference between Message Driven Beans and Stateless

Session beans?
A: In several ways, the dynamic creation and allocation of message-driven bean
instances mimics the behavior of stateless session EJB instances, which exist only
for the duration of a particular method call. However, message-driven beans are
different from stateless session EJBs (and other types of EJBs) in several
significant ways:

Message-driven beans process multiple JMS messages asynchronously, rather than

processing a serialized sequence of method calls.

Message-driven beans have no home or remote interface, and therefore cannot be

directly accessed by internal or external clients. Clients interact with message-
driven beans only indirectly, by sending a message to a JMS Queue or Topic.

Note: Only the container directly interacts with a message-driven bean by creating
bean instances and passing JMS messages to those instances as necessary.

The Container maintains the entire lifecycle of a message-driven bean; instances

cannot be created or removed as a result of client requests or other API calls.

Q: How can I call one EJB from inside of another EJB?

A: EJBs can be clients of other EJBs. It just works. Use JNDI to locate the Home
Interface of the other bean, then acquire an instance reference, and so forth.

Q: What is an EJB Context?

A: EJBContext is an interface that is implemented by the container, and it is also a
part of the bean-container contract. Entity beans use a subclass of EJBContext
called EntityContext. Session beans use a subclass called SessionContext. These
EJBContext objects provide the bean class with information about its container, the
client using the bean and the bean itself. They also provide other functions. See
the API docs and the spec for more details.

Q: The EJB container implements the EJBHome and EJBObject classes. For
every request from a unique client, does the container create a separate
instance of the generated EJBHome and EJBObject classes?
A: The EJB container maintains an instance pool. The container uses these instances
for the EJB Home reference irrespective of the client request. While refering the
EJB Object classes the container creates a separate instance for each client
request. The instance pool maintainence is up to the implementation of the
container. If the container provides one, it is available otherwise it is not
mandatory for the provider to implement it. Having said that, yes most of the
container providers implement the pooling functionality to increase the
performance of the application server. The way it is implemented is again up to the
implementer.

EJB Interview Questions