Forgive my ignorance

[jdavies]

But something has been troubling me as I develop EJB's, not just in JBOSS, but for Weblogic also.

I don't understand why the XML files need to contain an <ejb-ref> structure, especially in the web-client.xml file. Why can't the JSP clients simply load the EJB using the JNDI name (like I used to do all the time in Weblogic 5). Why must there be an XML file in the WAR file that hold an <ejb-ref>?

I assume that there must be a very good reason, since both JBOSS and Weblogic (and I suspect WebSphere) have implemented this structure. I was just hoping that someone might be able to educate me on this small point.

- Jeff

[timfox]

I believe ejb-ref is actually not a jboss or weblogic thing - it's part of the EJB spec.

I think the idea is it allows your applications to be portable.

By avoiding hard-coded JNDI references, if the actually locations change after build but before deploy, then you're application deployer can just change the ejb-ref entry in the deployment descriptor and your app. still works.

Or something like that...

I don't believe they're compulsory though - you can use hardcoded JNDI lookups if you want.