I know that the EJB specification forbids an EJB from creating or managing threads, but what about blocking? For example, I have a bean that needs to add an item to a shared Queue. The custom add method for the queue is synchronized, so is this okay for the bean to call?

Thanks.

The answer to your question lies in the question :
Can I use java.util.vector in EJBs . All its methods are synchronized .

J2EE spec does not prohibit from accessing sync. methods. It only prohibits starting , susoending threads from the ejb methods .

hope it helps
thanx and regards
Prajakt

Prajakt,

I agree with your bottom line. However, this:
<prajakt>
J2EE spec does not prohibit from accessing sync. methods. It only prohibits starting , susoending threads from the ejb methods.
</prajakt>

Is not completely true. Except for the rule forbidding EJBs from doing thread management, there is also a rule that sais:
<spec>
An enterprise Bean must not use thread synchronization primitives to synchronize execution of multiple instances.
</spec>

This rule is somewhat open for interpretation. For a discussion of this issue see:
http://www.theserverside.com/discussion/thread.jsp?thread_id=17449

yes , synchronizing (ejb) methods is alos not allowed .

Parjakt,

I disagree with your interpretation of the spec. The link I posted contains a pretty broad explanation of that, so I won't repeat it here.

Gal