I’m new to Java EE and see that EJBs are alive and well within the pure Java/Oracle community. However everyone at work makes a disgusted look on their face whenever someone else even utters the phrase “EJB”, which makes me think that they’re either becoming extincted or have been replaced by modern development teams with some other middleware technology.
Just like JSP has given way to JSF-centric view technologies, is the same true for EJBs? Either way, what are some popular alternatives to EJBs and how are they different? What benefits or features do they offer over EJBs?
The first version of EJB was introduced back in the end of the 1990s.
The disgusted look on your coworkers face when EJB is mentioned could be the consequence of the very complicated and troublesome usage patterns of the first two versions of EJB (e.g. complex xml deployment descriptors).
3.0 and 3.1 were major improvements regarding ease of use.
A Popular alternative is Spring framework + Hibernate / JPA