EJB Packaging and Deployment

Until now, we have focused on how to build EJBs, Java Persistence API (JPA) entities, and their clients, for exploiting the surrounding enterprise services offered by the EJB container. In Java EE parlance, these tasks fall under the role of Application Component Provider, which is simply referred to as the Provider. In this chapter, we explore the topics that surround the process of packaging your components into modules and library components, binding external references declared in your Java EE components to actual resources in your server environment, and sending it all off to an application server so that the components can be executed at run time by an application. These responsibilities are handled by the Java EE roles of the Application Assembler (the Assembler) and the Application Deployer (the Deployer). While in practice it is common for a single individual to perform one or more of these roles, or for many people to perform any single role, for the purpose of explaining these topics, we will partition the deployment tasks into stages that correspond to these designated roles.