Unmarshalling Error, badly need to understand.

Question

Hi all !
I have a problem I've been trying to solve for some time now. I really really really need help on this !!!
Have a bean (stateless session) which I call from a servlet (well, a dependent class of my servlet). I can ping the bean (it has the ping() method which return "pong") and it answers properly. But if I need my bean to return a dependent object, then I get an unmarshall exception.
So here are the details of my implementation. I wil try to give as much details as possible.
1 - My stateless session bean is called SMbs bean, with according home and remote interfaces.
2 - The bean container is Inprise AppServer 4.1.1
3 - The servlet engine is Jakarta Tomkat 4.0 (Catalina).
4 - All the classes used by the servlet are in jakarta\...\web-app\web-inf\lib
5 - The bean used dependent classes that are in the package zbapi. These classes, in turn, use classes in the package zbprot. The zbprot package is in the lib directory of my ejbcontainer. The zbapi package is not in my container since the needed classes should be deployed with the bean.
6 - The client bean is in the jakarte\...\web-app\web-inf\lib directory.
So :
The SMbs bean returns a MetaDataImpl which is in the ZBApi package. If I call the ping() method of my bean, it returns the string "pong" properly. But if I call getMetaData() which should return a MetaDataImpl instance (implementing MetaData),
I get the error :
java.rmi.MarshalException: CORBA MARSHAL 0[Error unmarshaling value [Could not g
et class for repository id = RMI:com.zerobase.api.scenarios.data.MbsMetaDataImpl
:71DA8BE7F971128]]
So what am I doing wrong ?
I found a way to make this work :
If I put the ZBAPI package AND the DEPLOYED jar in my jakarta\lib dir (which is not the same as web-app...), then I can do whatever I want with the bean. However, this is not a clean solution. I think that all my jar files should be in the web-app\... directory, not in the webserver's main lib directory...
I really need help on this, I know it has been adressed some time ago but the answer didn't help me...
Maxime Poulin.

Answer 1

Well, here is what I've got. I will just describe what I have (and seems relevant). Afterward, I answer your questions :
So just to recap. The bean has the method public Tester getTest(). Tester is an interface and is in the package com.zb.api.data . TesterImpl implements Tester and is in the same package. If the bean method is public TesterImpl getTest(), everything works, but if it returns a Tester, then it crashes.
In the deployed jar, both the class and the interface are present. (In Inprise's EJB Container). In Tomcat (client side), the com.zb.api.data package is in the lib directory of my web-app (...\webapp\web-inf\lib). My client app can use it at will. In this dir, I also have the bean client jar. However, when it is created, the client jar does not contain the TesterImpl if the bean method returns a Tester. I have to add it manually.
Anyways, seems to me that everything is at the right place : the client side can access both the class and the interface, the ejb container accesses to these classes as well, the jars are of the same version... There is really something strange about this all.
So :
How do your client know how to handle the returned object ?[Max] : The client know it will receive a Tester implementor. Tester and TesterImpl are available to the client.
Do you keep the implementation in the client jar[Max] : Yes, but if my bean returns a Tester (instead of TesterImpl), then TesterImpl is not in the client jar and I have to add it manually. (You mean the EJB Client Jar right ?)
Otherwise, do you have som kind of code base to download from?[Max] : No... Err, I do not know about that... What is it ?
Thank you very very much for your reply ! You seem to be more confortable than me with EJBs ! Hopefully, a solution to this will be found !
M.