Distributed systems without ejbs?

[abstract]

Can I perfectly replace ejbs with spring framework, using jta transaction manager?

[wpoitras]

You can replace EJBs with some other remoting strategy. However, if you have transactions that involve an EJB call that participates as part of a JTA transaction, you won't be able to replace that EJB call with something else. That is because I haven't seen another remoting strategy where a remote call can participate as part of a JTA transaction.

BTW, Spring can also fit into an EJB based system. It also can help you reduce your reliance on EJBs where they aren't really needed.

[Rod Johnson]

It's also worth nothing that in general the idea of propagating a tx context over the wire is someone you don't particularly want to do. In general, each remote endpoint is likely to be performing a piece of work that is complete in itself and corresponds to a transaction. I think that at least if you're using WebLogic with Spring remoting over RMI, with a JNDI lookup and JTA, you actually would get tx propagation without EJB. However, I haven't tried this.