Session Bean reads a XML file

[morenito9000]

Hi all,
in my application I read infos from a Postgres DB
using this architecture:

Stateless Session Beans + DAO classes

(inside DAO classes I wrote the SQL code to
retrieve infos from the DB).

Now I have to retrieve other infos from a XML file.

The question are:

1) Is it correct that a Session Bean reads infos
from a "normal" file or it must must be connected
only to a database ?

2) There are differences, for what concerne question n.1,
among Session Beans and Entity Beans ?

"JBoss runs on a linux server and PostgresDB on another
linux server, but is simple to say to JBoss where PostgresDB is.

If the file resides on a server different from
the Server Linux where JBoss runs, how can
I read the file ?

Thank you in advance
Moreno

p.s. sorry for my english :-)

[fabcipriano]

Read files in EJB is not J2EE compliant, see EJB 2.1 doc item 25.1.2

But if this is necessary only God can stop from read files.

[morenito9000]

"An enterprise bean must not use the java.io package
to attempt to access files and directories in the file system"

This EJB spec. sounds like a "condemnation" :-)

The problem is that I can't directly manage
infos I need (they are passed to me by other people
in my company and they don't allow a direct access
to "their" DB. They prepare every day a XML version
of DB infos).

Thank you fabcipriano.

Moreno