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Build, deploy, and test EJB components in just a few seconds

OpenEJB simplifies Enterprise JavaBeans development

By Nader Aeinehchi, JavaWorld.com, 06/13/05

Page 5 of 6

 jar xvf C:\dev\myapp\deploy\myapp-ejb.jar

Note: You must ensure that openejb-jar.xml is added to the application jar file every time you make a new build. For example, if you use Ant, make sure Ant always includes openejb-jar.xml.

Use the same naming convention in the application, the test, and openejb-jar.xml. Doing so ensures that the same application and the same test will run unmodified in both OpenEJB and your production application server.

For example, in the above test, we used the following convention:

 public final static String CAR_HOME = "ejb/car/Car"; 

Therefore, we must make sure that the configuration in openejb-jar.xml looks like this:

 <ejb-deployment ejb-name="TheCar" deployment-id="ejb/car/Car" container-id="Default Stateless Container">
</ejb-deployment> 

Run the test with embedded OpenEJB

Here comes the magic. To run your tests, you just need to add the following command line arguments to your JUnit tests:

 -Djava.naming.factory.initial=org.openejb.client.LocalInitialContextFactory 
-Djava.naming.provider.url=ormi://localhost:4201 
-Dopenejb.home=c:\java\openejb\openejb-0.9.2 
-Dopenejb.configuration=c:\java\openejb\openejb-0.9.2\conf\openejb.conf 
-Dopenejb.loader=embed 
-Dopenejb.localcopy=true 

If you have configured OpenEJB with a username and password, the following arguments must also be added:

 -Djava.naming.security.principal=adminusername
-Djava.naming.security.credentials=password 

Let's walk through the above arguments.

The following two arguments tell the JVM to use OpenEJB as the JNDI provider:

 -Djava.naming.factory.initial=org.openejb.client.LocalInitialContextFactory 
-Djava.naming.provider.url=ormi://localhost:4201 

In fact, the first time your application asks for a JNDI resource, LocalInitialContextFactory initializes and starts an instance of OpenEJB. OpenEJB then deploys and starts the jar files specified in openejb.conf.

The following two arguments give the location of both OpenEJB's home and the configuration file:

 -Dopenejb.home=c:\java\openejb\openejb-0.9.2 
-Dopenejb.configuration=c:\java\openejb\openejb-0.9.2\conf\openejb.conf 

As you can see, only the absolute path is used; otherwise, OpenEJB does not initialize properly.

Finally, the following lines ensure OpenEJB starts in the embedded mode:

 -Dopenejb.loader=embed 
-Dopenejb.localcopy=true 

Here is how CarEjbTest runs with embedded OpenEJB in Eclipse:

Debug the test with embedded OpenEJB

Out of the box, it is difficult to use an IDE debugger with an EJB container. However, with OpenEJB in embedded mode, things are simple. Simply choose "debug" instead of "run" with the above VM arguments. Remember that OpenEJB, EJB components, and JUnit tests all start in the same JVM and the debugger sees them as one big Java application.

Run the test on the remote production server

About 90 percent of the time, you will develop and test using an embedded OpenEJB container, since doing so is fast and easy. When you feel that a component is ready for integration testing, the application is deployed to the application server chosen for production. To run the tests on the remote production server, see your EJB container's documentation. With Oracle OC4J, running the tests is simple: