EJB Method Tool Agent

The EJB Method tool agent provides a means to invoke a home or business (instance) method on an Enterprise JavaBean. In the instance method case the target object can either be supplied by a process instance variable or it can be created on-the-fly for the purpose. Obviously there's no difference in the outcome for stateless session beans since all instances from a given home are equivalent and indistinguishable from one another.

Repository Metadata

The EJB Method tool agent metadata extend those of Java Method; an entry contains:

    <ejb-method ... home-method="boolean">
        ...
        <class-name ... />
        <method ... />
        <method-sig>*
            <parm-type ... />+
        </method-sig>
        <jndi-name .../>
    </ejb-method>

home-method: true if the method is defined on the home interface, false if it is a business (instance) method.
jndi-name: The public JNDI name of the context to which the EJB's home interface implementation is bound. The binding can be to the local or remote home of an entity or session bean (stateless or stateful).

XPDL Extension

A workflow can invoke a business method on a specific target EJB by using the obe.Target XPDL extension:

<Activity Id="nmtoken" ...>
    ...
    <Implementation>
        <Tool Id="nmtoken" Type="PROCEDURE">
            ...
            <ExtendedAttributes>
                <ExtendedAttribute Name="obe.Target" Value="nmtoken" />
            </ExtendedAttributes>
        </Tool>
    </Implementation>
    ...
</Activity>

Id: The ID of the tool agent to be invoked.
Value: The ID of the process instance attribute containing the target EJB, which must be an instance created from the EJBHome bound to jndi-name specified in the tool agent meta-data.