Cross referencing an Entity from another ear

Question

What I basically have is this (obfuscated example of my real domain code):

In CarDaoEar:

@Entity
public class Car {
//...
}

@Stateless
public class CarDao implements CarDaoRemote {
   @PersistenceContext( unitName = "carPersistenceUnit" )
   private EntityManger em;

   public void storeCar( Car car ) {
      em.persist( car );
   }

   public Car findCar( Car car ) {
     return em.find( Car.class, car.getID );
   }
}

@Remote
public interface CarDaoRemote {
   public void storeCar( Car car );

   public Car findCar( Car car );
}

In CarInventoryTimerEar:

@Stateless
public class CarInventoryTimer {

   @EJB
   private CarDaoRemote _carDaoRemote;

   // do some stuff with _carDaoRemote...

}

So the problem is, if I package the Entity & dao bean with CarInventoryTimerEar then the app server complains that I am trying to deploy the Entity again - I understand this. If, however, I don't include the classes I get a ClassNotFoundException - this also makes sense.

I am sure I am not the first one to do something similar to this - so to all you EJB experts out there, what am I doing wrong? How do I make this work?

TIA

Answer 1

If I'm reading you right you have one ear running where you want to use the EJBs in another. You should be able to create a client jar off of the first that you can include in your second. That way the second ear can use the client jar and not get the ClassNotFoundExceptions.

Answer 2

My solution (which I don't like) is to include the Car & CarDaoRemote class & interface in a "proxy" project devoid of all annotations. I then have CarInventoryTimerEar depend on the proxy project instead of the dao project directly.

I hope this helps someone else.