What Do Entity Beans Provide?

Through the use of the JDBC, I/O, XML, and other APIs, application components such as JSPs and servlets could persist information directly to a data store. However, Entity beans provide a layer of abstraction that can help with the following:

• Reduce dependencies between application components and data store implementation

• Concurrent read and write access to shared data by multiple clients

• Accessible to multiple client types

• Method-level object security

• High scalability

• Behind firewall, extra level of protection for data

• Caching of data with in-memory copy or persistent store