Ejb business method implementation question My application is two tier app tier and web tier .Web server has no database access so any request to database should got to appserver. I am confused about the implementation of business method. Need to know best practices. I have a businessObject Public interface IEmployee { Public getEmployeName(); } Public CustomEmployee implements IEmployee { Private String name; CustomEmployee(){ name=// call to dao get employee name } Public getEmployeName(){ return name; } } My session bean creates instance of new CustomEmployee and return IEmployee. My question should I use DTO to transfer data back to web tier or just return instance of IEmployee ? Want to follow best practices.

Always its best to use DTO to tranfer data to and fro, while communication is happening between multiple tires.

I came across a nice webpage based on this specific discussion It is DAO explained http://question2answer.googlepages.com/data-access-object-DAO.html Hope this helps.