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TomEE complains it doesn't know the container type, so I added type="javax.naming.InitialContext" and it worked (mostly).

Referencing a bean in another jar (with annotations)

When using annotations to reference a bean from another ejb in your ear you have to supplement the @EJB reference with a small chunk of xml in the ejb-jar.xml of the referring bean.

So in ejb app A colorsApp.jar you have this bean:

package com.foo.colors;

import javax.ejb.Stateless;

@Stateless
public class OrangeBean implements OrangeRemote {
}

Then in ejb app B shapesApp.jar you have this bean with a reference to OrangeRemote:

package com.foo.shapes;

import javax.ejb.Stateless;
import com.foo.colors.OrangeRemote;

@Stateless
public class SquareBean implements SquareRemote {
    @EJB OrangeRemote orangeRemote;
}

To hook this reference up you need to override this ref and add more info in the ejb-jar.xml of shapesApp.jar as follows:

<ejb-jar>
  <enterprise-beans>

    <session>
      <ejb-name>SquareBean</ejb-name>
      <ejb-ref>
    <ejb-ref-name>com.foo.shapes.SquareBean/orangeRemote</ejb-ref-name>
    <ejb-link>colorsApp.jar#OrangeBean</ejb-link>
      </ejb-ref>
    </session>

  </enterprise-beans>
</ejb-jar>

Referencing a bean in another jar (xml only, no annotations)

The same basic approach applies and dependency injection is still possible, however more information must be described in the xml.

In ejb app A colorsApp.jar you have this bean:

package com.foo.colors;

import javax.ejb.Stateless;

@Stateless
public class OrangeBean implements OrangeRemote {
}

Then in ejb app B shapesApp.jar -- note there is no @EJB annotation:

package com.foo.shapes;

import javax.ejb.Stateless;
import com.foo.colors.OrangeRemote;

@Stateless
public class SquareBean implements SquareRemote {
    OrangeRemote orangeRemote;
}

Here's how you would hook this reference up, injection and all, with just xml. The following would be added to the ejb-jar.xml of shapesApp.jar:

<ejb-jar>
  <enterprise-beans>

    <session>
      <ejb-name>SquareBean</ejb-name>
      <ejb-ref>
        <ejb-ref-name>com.foo.shapes.SquareBean/orangeRemote</ejb-ref-name>
        <ejb-ref-type>Session</ejb-ref-type>
        <remote>com.foo.colors.OrangeRemote</remote>
        <ejb-link>colorsApp.jar#OrangeBean</ejb-link>
        <injection-target>
          <injection-target-class>com.foo.shapes.SquareBean</injection-target-class>
          <injection-target-name>orangeRemote</injection-target-name>
        </injection-target>
      </ejb-ref>
    </session>

  </enterprise-beans>
</ejb-jar>

Note that the value of could actually be anything and the above example would still work as there is no annotation that needs to match the and no one will likely be looking up the EJB as it's injected.

Referencing a bean in another server

As of OpenEJB 4.0.0-beta-3, server to server references work.

First we need to configure and name the InitialContext that will be used to satisfy the lookup to the other server.

In this example we are calling our InitialContext shoe for fun.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<openejb>

  <JndiProvider id="shoe" type="javax.naming.InitialContext">
    java.naming.provider.url = ejbd://localhost:4201
    java.naming.factory.initial = org.apache.openejb.client.RemoteInitialContextFactory
  </JndiProvider>

</openejb>

Declaring the @EJB reference is then done using a mappedName that references the named InitialContext

public class BlueBean implements BlueRemote {

    @EJB(mappedName = "jndi:ext://shoe/OrangeBeanRemote")
    private OrangeRemote orangeRemote;

    public void hasOrangeRemote() {
        Assert.assertNotNull("orangeRemote is null", orangeRemote);
        assertEquals("olleh", orangeRemote.echo("hello"));
    }
}

Specifically, the mappedName syntax is as follows:

Referencing a bean in "many" servers

Note the above also works with the various forms of failover that TomEE supports.

If say, there are two servers that have the OrangeBeanRemote bean, you could expand the <JndiProvider> delcaration like so:

  <JndiProvider id="shoe" type="javax.naming.InitialContext">
    java.naming.provider.url = failover:ejbd://192.168.1.20:4201,ejbd://192.168.1.30:4201
    java.naming.factory.initial = org.apache.openejb.client.RemoteInitialContextFactory
  </JndiProvider>

In the event that the ejbd://192.168.1.20:4201 server cannot be contacted, the second server will be tried.

This sort of arangement can also happen dynamicall against a list of servers that continuously grows and shrinks. The server list is maintained behind the scenes using server discovery logic that can function on either UDP or TCP. See these docs for more details on Failover and Discovery: