This package contains two interfaces that define the
server-side API for JAX-RPC. These
interfaces allow a JAX-RPC service implementation to detect the
beginning and end of its life cycle in order to perform appropriate
initialization and cleanup as well as to gain access to its execution
environment.
Both interfaces are relevant only to a service that is hosted within
a web container. Services implemented as stateless session beans have
access to similar facilities via the life cycle methods of the bean
itself and the SessionContext object passed as an
argument to its setSessionContext( ) method.
The server-side programming model for JAX-RPC is, in part, dependent
on the container in which the service is hosted. For example, a
service implemented as a stateless session bean can assume that
methods invoked on a given instance are executed serialized with
respect to each other, and therefore need not be concerned about
threading issues. By contrast, a servlet-hosted service must assume
that any of its methods may be called concurrently in separate
threads and must, therefore, be thread-safe, unless it implements the
javax.servlet.SingleThreadModel interface. Note,
however, that while the J2EE specification requires that the
container honor this interface, the JAX-RPC specification does not.
Therefore, services written for web containers that implement only
the JAX-RPC specification (such as the one provided by JWSDP 1.0)
must be thread-safe.
