Hi all,
I have a design question regarding the number of EJBs the container creates at its start-up time and singletons.

1- If the number of beans can be declared in the xml file of the app server, say 1, what is the need for a singleton design?
2- What does it mean to set the number of beans to 1 in the xml file/have a singleton?
3- If I set the number of beans to 1 in the xml file, does this mean that there will be one bean per row of database entry, or just one bean period? Let me elaborate: My bean represents a row in the database, so say there are 2 clients requesting the same data; Does this mean one has to waite untill the bean is done servicing the first request? And what happens if another client requests a diferent bean for a diferent record concurrently?
4- How can I ensure that I have 1 bean per database row?
5- Is this a good design pattern?
Thaks in advance
-r

Interesting... I am assuming you are talking only entity beans here.

This is what I think...
If you set number of beans to 1, then only one request (be it for any row in your database) can be processed at any time. Other requests should get CreateExceptions/FinderExceptions. After the request is over, the container may passivate that bean to serve another request. It is like having only 1 waiter (instance) to serve all the tables (requests) in a restaurant.

Why would you like to have one dedicated bean instance per database row? You should reconsider why you are using entity beans, maybe.

regards,
Nitesh

Well, it is a decision handed down to me...
I am wondering how would a singleton behave? Would other clients get a Finder/Create Exception if concurrent requests are made?
How can I make sure that only one bean exists per record? I just do not want to allow multiple beans servicing clients for a given record. Say three different clients request record mm67. For me it is OK for the two clients to waite untill client one has finished with bean. What I do not want to happen is to have three beans servicing the clients for the same record.
Thanks in advance
-r

Rasoul, What is wrong or why don't you like to have a pool of entity beans representing a single row? It is the property of entity beans and the container will take care of concurrency, if the appropriate attribute is set. I think serializable attribute will be equivalent to your requirement.

Senthil.

Well it is the ejbLoad, and ejbStore which are called after each business methods. I have set the intelligence to take care of the ejbStore, but the load is a bit more tricky. It is the belief of the MIS dept. that such an architecture will not scale. So I must instead come up with an alternative. I thought that singletons may provide the answer. The alternative was a timer. But then the problem of timer synchronization of multiple entity beans for the same record arise.
Any thoughts on that...
Thanks
-r

If you don not want to use the EJB pooling concept, there is no point in using EJB. I think better you could use simple JDBC call and also Singleton is not permitted in J2EE.

Senthil.

Thanks for your response.
I guess I have to come up with a different architecture.
-r