EJB-Enterprise JavaBeans is a server side component architecture that simplifies the process of building enterprise-level, distributed applications in java. The EJB specification, released by Sun Microsystems, defines a set of classes and interfaces that form the EJB API (application programming interface).These classes and interfaces are used to create standardized EJB components, which can be deployed on various j2ee-complaint application servers. For example, you can create a standardized EJB component for credit card authentication. This can be used in the middle tier of different online shopping applications for validating credit card information.

EJB components are deployed in EJB containers of  j2ee-complaint application servers, such as j2ee1.4,welogic and jboss.The EJB container provides various server-side services, such as resource pooling, transaction management ,security and network connections .This allows developers to concentrate on the application programming and leaving complex underlying issues for the container to handle.

The EJB component architecture has certain characteristics that enable you to implement the business logic of enterprise-level applications effectively and easily.

The characteristics of EJB are:

 • It hides server-side system level issues from developers.
 • It defines a standard component architecture that enables you to build distributed object-oriented business applications.
 • It facilitates creating enterprise –level applications by allowing easy integration with EJB components as well as with other components, such as servlets, java server pages and JavaBeans.
 • It enables you to create components and applications that are reusable across various j2ee-compliant servers.

The server-side components deployed on the application servers can be implemented using various technologies, such as EJB and Microsoft’s COM/DCOM. The EJB components are written in the java language. As a result, they enable you to write which means they can be deployed on any j2eecomplaint application servers that run on Microsoft windows –based platforms.

Enterprise JavaBeans are different from JavaBeans, another similarly names Sun Microsystems component based technology. JavaBeans are development components used to build entire application or integrate different EJB components as an application. However, unlike EJB, JavaBeans themselves are not deployable but allow building applications that are deployable on application servers.

Some examples of the real time applications where you can use the EJB component architecture are:

 • Online share trading application
 • Online reservation application
 • Online catalog application.