J2EE Application Client : How do they work?

[alchemista]

I went through the JBoss Getting Started tutorial, and was wondering how J2EE Application Clients worked with JBoss.

I see that in the Duke's Bank example, the Ant target that launches run-client simply makes a normal Java call to the application client main class. However, there's no launch of a client container that I can see. I thought the container was required for a J2EE application client?

The only other thing I see is that the application client CLASSPATH is set to include the JBOSS client JARs. Does something in there override the normal JDK jars in order to make it behave as a J2EE app client? If not, how is JBoss mapping the application client's coded references to the real JNDI references?

I've always been slightly confused about what makes a real J2EE Application Client, so any info would help.

Thanks

[sunofra]

I really wish someone would answer this. I have the same exact question.