Unchecked Exception break stateful session bean via EJBNoSuc

[ejb3workshop]

I have the following services offered by a stateful session bean. When a business exception is thrown by the bean there is no problem, but when there is a unchecked exception (like a Runtime Exception) the bean seems to be removed. I don't see any messages indicating the removal of the bean itself, but any call to the bean after the runtime exception caused a EJBNoSuchObjectException on the client.

@Stateful
public class AddressBookBean implements AddressBookRemote, AddressBookLocal
{
..
public String ping(String ping)
{
 return ping;
}

public void createException() throws ContactNotFoundException
{
 throw new ContactNotFoundException("Testing Exception Handling");
}

public void createRuntimeException() throws RuntimeException
{
 throw new RuntimeException("Testing Runtime Exception Handling");
}
..
}

Here is the client side code:

System.out.println(addressBook.ping("Message"));
try
{
 addressBook.createException();
}
catch (ContactNotFoundException cnfe)
{
System.err.println("Expected exception received : "+cnfe.getClass().getName());
//This exception is throws correctly
}

System.out.println(addressBook.ping("Message"));
try
{
 addressBook.createRuntimeException();
}
catch (EJBException ee)
{
 Exception rootException = ee.getCausedByException();
 System.err.println("Root Expected exception received : "+rootException.getClass().getName());
//The runtime exception is encapsulated in an EJBException
}
catch (RuntimeException re)
{
System.err.println("Expected exception received : "+re.getClass().getName());
}

//THIS CALL CAUSES THE javax.ejb.EJBNoSuchObjectException: Could not find Stateful bean:
System.out.println(addressBook.ping("Message"));

I don't know if this is specified in the EJB3 Spec to behave like this, but it does feel a bit like a bug. Any input on this issue would help me a great deal.

[bill.burke]

system exceptions cause the bean to be discarded.

[ejb3workshop]

I took a look at the spec. In my example i am throwing a RuntimeException. What makes this a System exception. Is there a way I can annotate this, to avoid the bean being discarded. It seems to me that there are a number of exceptions (EntityNotFound etc) which cause this behaviour.

Thanks for your feedback
Alex
ejb3workshop.com

[bill.burke]

@ApplicationException
public MyRuntimeException extends RuntimeException {}

For the persistence exceptions, yes, this sucks, but you can fix it within ejb-jar.xml with the application-exception element.

[rdewell]

Is there logging somewhere that says:

Removing XYZ SFSB due to exception: blah blah..?

That might be helpful at least. We're getting EJBNoSuchObject exceptions in our log all over the place with no clear reason why -- there are no other exceptions in the log files.

Ryan