RE: [Springframework-developer] EJBs and their Bean Factories

[Alef A. <al...@jt...>]

> Looking at the code for the EJB base classes, unless I'm missing
> something obvious (not unheard of), it seems that by default a separate
> bean factory is created for each bean instance.
Well, to put it bluntly: you're not mistaken; it's the way it is.

As far as I'm concerned, the issue basically is that without violated any
rules that apply to implementing EJBs, it's just not possible to get an
ApplicationContext shared across multiple multiple beans of different types,
not even across multiple instances of the same type. 

For one because resources instantiated as fields of EJBs should either be
serializable (which the ApplicationContext isn't, not even mentioning any
beans inside it), or transient (or closed and thrown away on passivation). 

Another solution would be (and I hate to say this, but this is what we're
currently using in one of our applications that is still based on EJBs but
in the process of being migrated to Spring) to bind the context in a JNDI
tree, but here, the Serializable argument also applies. So that (when
applying the rules really strict) is one to throw away as well.

Of course when using certain EJB container, you won't have to worry about
serializable issues when not accessing the JNDI from outside the VM the
server is running in. Also, having the ApplicationContext defined as a
singleton or something (ughh!) wouldn't result in too many problems using a
simple EJB container, but I guess that's not really an option we (Spring)
are eager to offer. The same applies to providing an approach based on
static fields.

Ohh, there is something like the BeanFactoryLocator, but this only reads in
BeanFactory I believe.

Basically my approach is to avoid the use EJBs where possible and if needed,
implement an EJB using Spring's EJB layer and don't worry about one or two
applicationcontexts too much being created. I mean, afterall, one of the
reasons I choose Spring in the first place is to be able to get rid of EJBs.
(I won't start a rant here, that might just be personal ;-).

I don't know if this satisfies or if somebody else has opinions?

Alef