EJB 3.0 vs Spring

[Steve]

I am considering using EJB 3.0 with an Application Server (e.g. JBoss) or Spring with a Web Server (e.g., Tomcat). In either case, I
plan to use Hibernate. What are the major pros and cons of each approach?

Thanks.

Steve

 

[Daniel Dyer]

I am considering using EJB 3.0 with an Application Server (e.g. JBoss)
or Spring with a Web Server (e.g., Tomcat). In either case, I
plan to use Hibernate. What are the major pros and cons of each approach?

I think that Rod Johnson's advice to use EJB if you need distributed
objects (i.e. if you *really* need distributed objects and can justify
that need) and avoid it if you don't is broadly sensible. EJB3 has
improved things greatly, particularly with entity beans, but it still
might be a bit early to depend on it. The JBoss implementation is in beta
(beta 8 no less) and is buggy. The JBoss website has the following
disclaimer:

"NOTE: JBoss EJB3 is not a final implementation and it does not pass the
EJB3 Compatibility Test Suite."

My experience with JBoss + Hibernate + EJB 3.0 was OK until I hit a bug
that required an upgrade that quickly descended into a mess of seemingly
irreconcilable inter-dependencies.

Furthermore, Sun currently don't seem comfortable recommending their Java
EE 5 offering (Sun AS 9) over their J2EE 1.4 offering (Sun AS 8.2). BEA
WebLogic might be a better bet but it's not cheap.

You can use the Hibernate JPA EntityManager outside of an application
server, which might be the way to go. You still get to take advantage of
all of the entity annotations.

Dan.

 

[Danno]

I am considering using EJB 3.0 with an Application Server (e.g. JBoss) or Spring with a Web Server (e.g., Tomcat). In either case, I
plan to use Hibernate. What are the major pros and cons of each approach?

Thanks.

Steve

Apples and Oranges...

You may want to ask which is better a JEE Container or a Spring
Container. Also if you are interested in Spring, you may wanna sit
tight for a few more days (4 to be exact) because Spring 2.0 will
support JPA (EJB 3.0), as well as other persistence ORMs as part of
it's container.

I am a JEE Developer, but Spring sure has made me want to jump ship
with what they have to offer.....

http://static.springframework.org/spring/docs/2.0.x/reference/index.html

Thanks for bringing this up here, because this will make for an
interesting discussion.