[Enterprise Extensions only]

Writing WebSphere Enterprise JavaBeans as clients of a 3rd-party CORBA ORB

Enterprise JavaBeans hosted by WebSphere Application Server can act as clients of CORBA servers, including servers running on third-party ORBs. These EJB clients follow the same design model as any other enterprise beans. In general, a minimal enterprise bean consists the following developer-provided code:

During deployment, additional code is generated for the container in which the bean resides. This code is specific to the container, for example, WebSphere Application Server, and is completely independent of any calls the bean makes to non-WebSphere-based servers.

When the enterprise bean acts as a client to a server, the code supporting that exchange resides in the implementation of the business methods of the bean. This includes the code for getting a reference to the client-side WebSphere ORB, contacting the server or desired servant object, and calling the methods in the CORBA IDL interface between the enterprise bean and the CORBA server.

Typically, the least straightforward part of using a CORBA server on a third-party ORB from an enterprise bean in the WebSphere environment is establishing the connectivity between the enterprise bean and the server. After connectivity has been established, making remote invocations is simply a matter of calling the methods in the CORBA IDL interface.

The technique used to establish connectivity between the enterprise bean and the server depends on the design of the application and the techniques supported in common between the two ORBs. Common techniques include the following: