How to persist local entity reference?

Question

I had a remote entity bean A hold a reference to a remote entity bean B's handle. Now I change them to local entity beans. But Local entity bean doesn't support Handle and I found local entity stub is not even Serializable (WebSphere5.0). How do I persist local entity bean B's reference? This is kind of non-container managed relationship. Why ejb2.0 spec doesn't support local entity Handle? How do you do non-container managed relationship without handle?

Answer 1

"I had a remote entity bean A hold a reference to a remote entity bean B's handle."
You hold a reference; as in an instance variable? If so, how did you use the handle? What did you do with the reference when the entity was stored or passivated?
"Now I change them to local entity beans. But Local entity bean doesn't support Handle... Why ejb2.0 spec doesn't support local entity Handle? "
Handle objects are intended to assist with holding for long-lived references to remote objects by avoiding the potential problems associated with holding a reference directly to the remote object. Since there are no concerns with respect to working remotely, Local objects do not need a Handle. Just hold reference to the Local directly, like you would any other object.
"...and I found local entity stub is not even Serializable."
Well of course not, it's not a remote object. One of the main points driving the use of local interfaces is to limit access to components. Hence only components within the same JVM as the Local can access it.
"How do I persist local entity bean B's reference?"
What do you mean by "persist"? Were you actually storing the Handle object into the database?! If so, then I see why you wanted a serializable Local Handle.