The Enterprise JavaBeans architecture supports server components. Server components are application components that run in an application server such as CICS®. Unlike desktop components, they do not have a visual element and the container they run in is not visual.
Server components written to the Enterprise JavaBeans specification are known as enterprise beans. They are portable across any EJB-compliant application server.
To be useful, server components require access to the application server's infrastructure services, such as its distributed communication service, naming and directory services, transaction management service, data access and persistence services, and resource-sharing services. Different application servers implement these infrastructure services using different technologies. However, an EJB-compliant application server provides an enterprise bean with access to these services through standard interfaces, and manages many of them on behalf of the bean.
Bean developers can use a visual tool, such as WebSphere Studio Application Developer, to create enterprise beans. Application developers can combine method calls to enterprise beans with desktop JavaBeans, Web servlets, and handwritten code to form client/server applications.