Question

EJBs seem to be loaded lazily – whenever accessed.

However, I want to initialize them eagerly – i.e. whenever the container starts-up. How is this achieved (in JBoss in particular)

This topic gives some hints, but isn’t quite satisfactory.

Answer 1

As of EJB 3.1, singleton beans can be notified of module start and stop:

@Singleton
@Startup
public class StartupBean {
    @PostConstruct
    private void postConstruct() { /* ... */ }

    @PreDestroy
    private void preDestroy() { /* ... */ }
}

Prior to EJB 3.1, there is no standard, EJB-only solution. I’d suggest adding a WAR to your EAR and using a servlet-context-listener.