This topic provides an overview of the high-level tasks for using
ActivitySessions in J2EE applications.
- Develop a J2EE application that uses one or more enterprise beans
that are persisted to non-transactional datastores. Use
this task when you have an application that needs to coordinate multiple one-phase
resource managers. For example, for two or more entity EJBs whose persistence
is delegated to LocalTransaction resource adapters.
In this scenario, the
enterprise beans used by the application have an Activation policy of ActivitySession
and a local transaction containment policy with a boundary of ActivitySession
and resolution-control of ContainerAtBoundary. The synchronization of the
EJB state data is synchronized, by the container, with the one-phase resource
managers at ActivitySession completion and no application code is required
to be aware of ActivitySession support.
- Develop a J2EE application in which an enterprise bean accesses
a resource manager multiple times in different business methods. Use
this task when you have an application that needs to extend a resource manager
local transaction (RMLT) over several business methods of an enterprise bean
instance.
In this scenario, the enterprise beans used by the application
have an Activation policy of ActivitySession and a local transaction containment
policy with a boundary of ActivitySession and resolution-control of Application.
The application logic starts and ends the RMLTs, for example using the javax.resource.cci.LocalTransaction
interface offered by a LocalTransaction Connector, but is not constrained
to start and commit the LocalTransaction in the same method.
- Develop a J2EE client application to use an ActivitySession to
scope EJB activation and load-balancing. Use this task when you
have an application client that needs to access an entity bean instance several
times in the same client session, either without needing to run under a transaction
context, or with the need to run under a number of distinct and serially-executed
transactions.
In this scenario, the enterprise beans used by the application
client have an Activation policy of ActivitySession and a local transaction
containment policy appropriate to the function of the enterprise bean. The
J2EE client application can represent a period of user activity, for example
a signon period, during which a number of interactions occur with one or more
enterprise beans. If the J2EE client application begins an ActivitySession
and invokes the enterprise beans within the scope of the UOW represented by
the ActivitySession, then the enterprise bean instances are activated by the
container on the ActivitySession boundary and remain in the active state until
passivated by the container at the end of the ActivitySession. Workload affinity
management based on the ActivitySession is a platform quality of service.
Global transactions can begin and end within the ActivitySession, if they
are wholly encapsulated by the ActivitySession and run serially. EJB instances
activated at the ActivitySession boundary remain active across the serial
global transactions.
- Develop a Web application client to participate in an ActivitySession
context. A web application that runs in the WebSphere Web container
can participate in an ActivitySession context. Web applications can use the
UserActivitySession interface to begin and end an ActivitySession context.
Also, the ActivitySession can be associated with an HttpSession, thereby extending
access to the ActivitySession over multiple HTTP invocations and supporting
EJB activation periods that can be determined by the lifecycle of the web
HTTP client.
The Web container manages ActivitySessions based on deployment
descriptor attributes associated with the Web application module.