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Theory and Practice of Enterprise JavaBean Portability

Parent SEI Project

COTS-Based Systems Initiative

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Santiago Comella-Dorda
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CMU/SEI-99-TN-005

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The modern enterprise information system (EIS) requires the integration of numerous technologies such as distribution, transactions, data management, security, and naming. Off-the-shelf architectures such as Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) provide a pre-integrated solution that supports the quick development and deployment of information systems. Unfortunately, the EJB specification is extremely porous, leading to portability problems. In addition, the line between vendor extensions and EJB standard functionality is blurred, making it difficult for bean providers to know what functionality can be depended upon across server implementations. This paper presents sources of portability problems in EJB and illustrates them with some real examples. We also present our opinion about the direction the EJB specification should take to enable effective reuse of Enterprise Beans between servers.