EJB3 without annotations

Question

Hi,
Is it possible to create EJB 3 beans without using annotations? I'm using a J2EE profiler that doesn't show any EJB data, most likely because annotations are being used. If I can find a way to specify the EJB3 beans without using Java Annotations, then I might starting seeing EJB data.
Thank you.
Regards,
--Will                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Answer 1

this situation bothered me extremely as well. you can solve it one of two ways.
as the previous poster mentioned, you can separate your entities from your DTO's. this is nice in a lot of ways because the ideal objects for over-the-wire usage may be very different from the ideal objects for your database model. the downside of this approach is that you may end up duplicating a lot of work.
the alternative, is using xml files to describe your entities. this is still supported in ejb3, although it is not obvious from a lot of the documentation. annotations were meant to remove the need for xml config files, but almost everything you can do with annotations is still possible via xml configuration (in fact, you can combine the two, doing some configuration with annotations and some with xml, where xml based configuration will override annotation based configuration). check out documentation on "orm.xml" for details. the upside of this solution is it removes annotations from your entities. the downside is that it can be a little more work to manage than annotation based configuration.