Shared BeanFactory between EJB's in Websphere 5.0?

[wfaler]

Hi.
I am trying to get a common BeanFactory instance between 4 EJB:s (1ssb and 3 mdb:s) in Websphere 5.0.
I have had my exact same configuration working in JBoss, but for some reason, I am not able to achieve the same effect in WAS, because each EJB will create its own hierarchy of beans.
My aim is to have shared instances of a few objects between these EJB's.

At the moment, I my code looks like this:
public void onEjbCreate() {
BeanFactory factory = null;
BeanFactoryLocator locator = ContextSingletonBeanFactoryLocator
.getInstance("META-INF/spring-context.xml");
BeanFactoryReference ref = locator.useBeanFactory("context");
factory = ref.getFactory();
dispatcher = (MessageDispatcher) factory.getBean("responseDispatcher");
}

I have also tried using SingletonBeanFactoryLocator with no effect.

the spring-context.xml looks like this (excluding header-stuff):
<beans>
<bean id="context" class="org.springframework.context.support.ClassPa thXmlApplicationContext">
<constructor-arg>
<list>
<value>META-INF/esb.xml</value>
<value>META-INF/esb.xml</value>
</list>
</constructor-arg>
</bean>
</beans>

The esb.xml in turn contains bean-configurations for all the beans that I want to access.

Any help with this would be grately appreciated, as I have been banging my head against the wall quite a while at the moment..

[rayychoi]

May be you can package these EJB-JARs within one application's EAR.

[wfaler]

"May be you can package these EJB-JARs within one application's EAR."

They are all within one EAR and even one EJB-JAR, but Websphere seems to have a paranoid level of classloader-isolation with one classloader PER EJB!
Classloader isolation is somewhat configurable, but not in this respect.

However, I think I might have have found a way:
Binding the shared resources as remote objects with RMI which I bootstrap in a Servlet. This at least works for me on JBoss, but I will have to wait until monday at work to confirm it on WAS.
It should work, just as long as Websphere doesn't have some strange rules/limitations on RMI binding..

[noelbranz]

At the moment, I my code looks like this:
public void onEjbCreate() {
BeanFactory factory = null;
BeanFactoryLocator locator = ContextSingletonBeanFactoryLocator
.getInstance("META-INF/spring-context.xml");
BeanFactoryReference ref = locator.useBeanFactory("context");
factory = ref.getFactory();
dispatcher = (MessageDispatcher) factory.getBean("responseDispatcher");
}

Trying putting your codes that initialize the BeanFactoryLocator inside the setSessionContext() for SessionBeans and setMessageDrivenContext for MDBs instead of inside onEjbCreate()

[wfaler]

Haven't tried the latter suggestion, maybe I'll try it later on during a cleanup round, however, the RMI route did work, so I am going with that for now.