Developing Entity Beans 

Entity beans represent persistent data. Each instance of an entity bean represents a database table row.

When to Develop Entity Beans

You can develop entity beans, if:

·        Your application requires interactions with persistent data, represented in a relational database – storing, removing and changing the data in the database

·        You want to develop fine-grained persistent objects

·        The design of your application requires shared access to the persistent data

·        You want to develop a persistent component

·        You want to represent database relationships on object level

The Development Process

The process of developing an entity bean consists of the following steps:

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       1.      Choose whether to use Bean-Managed or Container-Managed Entity Beans

       2.      Create the entity bean using the NetWeaver Developer Studio

       3.      Develop the source code of the entity bean. This includes developing:

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                            a.      The component interface(s)

                            b.      The home interface(s)

                            c.      The bean class

                            d.      Any helper classes required by the entity bean

       4.      Create and edit the bean’s deployment descriptors

       5.      Create the database tables (you can create the database tables before developing your entity beans)

If your database tables already exist, you can omit this step.

       6.      Specify the O/R mapping

       7.      Compile and pack all EJB components in a JAR file

       8.      Pack the whole application in an EAR file

       9.      Deploy the application on SAP J2EE Engine

   10.      Start the application