I'm doing some more PHP web app work for a friend's small company. I don't like PHP much at all, but I'm happy to be helping him out by letting him branch into the web app space and it earns me some cash I can put towards debts, which is good.

I've been digging up books that were packed away. Today I found my copies of Java in a Nutshell and Java Enterprise in a Nutshell. Since I'm ostensibly playing around with JSP and Servlets, the latter will probably come in handy soon. The last time I looked at it, I was trying to fumble my way through EJB for Viasec. I checked the back of the book for a quick blurb on EJB, just to see if it had a particularly insightful take on what EJB was all about:

"Enterprise JavaBeans, a component model that separates high-level business logic from low-level housekeeping chores like security and transaction management"

Is it just me, or does this not really say anything? Isn't the point of any component model to separate concerns, possibly by, oh, I don't know, building systems out of components? Compare this to the blurb about Servlets:

"Java Servlets, a mechanism for extending web servers that allows Java code to perform tasks traditionally handled by CGI scripts"

Alright, it's only marginally better, but at least after reading it, I can equate Servlets roughly with CGI scripts. I can't equate EJB to anything on the basis of its description.

I know what EJB is, there's no need to tell me.

At least, I think I do.

My point is that this, to me, points to a widespread and fundamental state of confusion as to what EJB is by all but a few people (relatively speaking), and that far too many people think they need EJB when in reality, they need more information.

None of this surprises me. I guess I just felt like dredging up this point of view on EJB to see if I still felt the same way. It seems that I do.