I am currently reworking Chapter 12 for the SOA Suite 11g Handbook. This chapter describes various types of interaction SOA Composite Applications can have with Java applications and components. Since the initial creation of this chapter – some 6 months ago – we have had the Patch Set 2 release of the SOA Suite. This patch set introduced some additional functionality in this particular area of the SOA Suite, including the EJB Binding directly based on a Java Interface rather than on an SDO service created for the EJB. While that last option did the job, it requires manipulation of the EJB that is to be invoked – to SDO enable it – and that was undesirable and sometimes even impossible.

This article describes about the simplest way to get going with the EJB Binding – Java based – in Patch Set 2 (11.1.1.3.0). Building on this example, you will probably find yourself able to do useful things with it.

The steps we will go through are:

1. Create the EJB that is to be invoked from the Composite application through EJB Binding. Make sure the remote interface is created as well.
2. Deploy this EJB (in this simple example to the same WebLogic Managed Server that is running the SOA Suite)

3. Create a new SOA Composite Application
4. Copy the remote interface to the SCA-INF/src directory (or copy a JAR containing that interface to SCA-INF/lib)
5. Create an EJB Binding Reference. Configure it to invoke the EJB created and deployed above; specify the Java Interface that describes the interaction
6. Create a Mediator that is wired to the EJB Binding Reference; create mappings from the input and output of the Mediator to the XML structure derived by JDeveloper from the Java Interface definition
7. Finish the composite application; from here on it is ‘business as usual’ since none of the other components in the applications are aware that the Mediator talks to something ’special’ like an EJB.

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