EJBs on JBoss Server

Question

I have deployed my application on a JBoss server (4.0.5). I have two EJBs that hangs onto a static class called ServiceLocator for the class to use through the life of the object.. This class is a Singleton. Within the ejbCreate method, I check for the ServiceLocator class. If it is null, I call ServiceLocator.getInstance().
My problem is understanding this behavior. When I login to my application we go through EJB1. One of the things we do is call other ejbs for addtional information from EJB1. This is where the Service Locator becomes involved. Inside individual methods I use the ServiceLocator(sl) and fetch the appropriate EJB for use. The problem is the variable sl, is null when I attempt to use it within a business method.. When I change the code to call the class like ServiceLocator.getInstance() everything is fine. When I use a static initializer, the error goes away, too. From the log files, I see the ejbcontainer is calling ejbRemove() just prior to calling the ServiceLocator.
Can someone share their knowledge in this area? I was under the understanding that ejbCreate was the approach one should take for creating a instance/class-level variable. Having a class level variable seem to make sense and reduced the number of keystrokes.
Thank you for taking the time to read and explain.
Russ

Answer 1

I know perfectly well that Tomcat is servlet container. But this does not change the fact that JPA persistence works on tomcat. Or even i believe on a stand allown application. My question is if there is diference in the behaviour in the JPA standalone beans and the ones loaded in Application server. I believe that there is difference in the way that the application server manages tham and probably there is some kind of cache or I don't know.
The first difference I saw is that jboss loads and precompiles all queries on startup and also loads several instances of the JPA beans.
Can you confirm this or I am wrong?