# EJB 2.x application development

The workbench provides a specialized environment that you can use to develop and test enterprise beans that conform to the distributed component architecture defined in the Sun Microsystems Enterprise JavaBeans™ (EJB) version specification. This product supports the Enterprise JavaBeans 1.1, 2.0, 2.1, and 3.0 specification levels.

The complete Enterprise JavaBeans specifications and descriptions of the technology are available from the java.sun.com Web site.

If you are not familiar with enterprise beans or related EJB technology, see EJB 2.x architecture for a brief description of key EJB concepts.

The EJB development environment includes the following tools:

The Java™ EE perspective
  All of the EJB tools are accessible from the Java EE perspective. This perspective provides a layout in which the most commonly used actions, views, and wizards for Java EE and EJB development are easily accessible
Creating enterprise beans
  The EJB tools help you create enterprise beans, such as session beans or message-driven beans. You can accomplish the following complementary enterprise bean development activities:
  - Writing and editing business logic.
  - Importing or exporting enterprise beans.
  - Maintaining enterprise bean source code and generated code using build in Java development tools, and team and version control capabilities of the workbench.
Validating enterprise bean code
  The EJB tools automatically validate that your enterprise bean code is consistent and that it conforms to the rules defined by the Enterprise JavaBeans specifications. Code verification occurs whenever an enterprise bean or its properties are changed. Errors and warnings are displayed in the Problems view of the workbench. Files with errors also display error icons.
Importing existing EJB JAR files
  EJB Tools allow beans and other metadata from an EJB JAR file to be imported into a new or existing EJB project.
Exporting existing EJB projects into JAR files
  EJB tools can export your EJB project so that it may be deployed to an application server.

- EJB 3.0 and EJB 3.1 architecture
  This topic provides a high-level overview of the distributed component architecture defined in the Sun Microsystems Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) version 3.0 architecture specification.
- Developing EJB 3.1 Applications
  You can use the workbench to develop and test enterprise beans that conform to the distributed component architecture defined in the Sun Microsystems Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) 3.10 specification.
- EJB 2.x architecture
  This topic provides a high-level overview of the distributed component architecture defined in the Sun Microsystems Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) version 2.x architecture specification.
- EJB 2.x development resources
  This topic describes resources and development tools that are commonly used in EJB version 2.x development.
- Creating enterprise beans with XDoclet annotation support
  You can use a wizard to create session beans and message-driven beans that support XDoclet annotation.