EJBs From JSPs - Tutorials?

Question

Hi all,
I've just been given a task, and I don't know where to start. I've been given an EJB and I need to write a web front end to test it (JSP). Now if it was a plain JavaBean, I know how to do it. But I know EJB's are different.
Could somebody point me in the direction of a good tutorial about accessing EJBs from JSPs. I'm using WebLogic as my application server, so something relevant to that would be nice.
Cheers for any help.

Answer 1

To put it in "idiot" terms:
Think of your EJBs as people you want to ring up on the phone. You know their name, but not their number. How do you do this in real life? You use a phone book, using the person's name as a reference, which will lead you to the right number to dial.
The phonebook in this paradigm is JNDI - the naming and directory interfaces.
The name you use to look up is how the EJB is bound (ie, "java:comp/env/ejb/MyPerson", or "foo/bar/beans/MyPerson"). You define this name (the phone number) in the deployment descriptors packaged with the EJBs in the jar file.
You access the phone book (in your JSP or some other bean in your webapp) by using a Context.
ie:
Object objRef = initialContext.lookup("foo/bar/beans/MyPerson");
Then you ask the context for the person's home information:
MyPersonHome home = (com.foo.interfaces.MyPersonHome)PortableRemoteObject.narrow(objRef, com.foo.interfaces.MyPersonHome.class);
Once you know where they live (you have their Home information), you can ring them up (create them, search for them, search for a singular one)
MyPerson bill = home.findByPersonNameInHouse("billy");
once you have Billy in your possession, yu can perform business logic on him:
String stats = bill.getStatistics();
// get rid of bill permanently
bill.remove();
That should be enough of an introductory paradigm. You will need to follow along the tutorials and other many documents to understand exactly how things are bound (phone numbers are listed) and so forth.
Good luck!