Asynchronous beans

Operating Systems: i5/OS
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Asynchronous beans

An asynchronous bean is a Java object or enterprise bean that can run asynchronously by a Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition (J2EE) application, using the J2EE context of the asynchronous bean creator.

Asynchronous beans can improve performance by enabling a J2EE program to decompose operations into parallel tasks. Asynchronous beans support the construction of stateful, active J2EE applications. These applications address a segment of the application space that J2EE has not previously addressed (that is, advanced applications that require application threading, active agents within a server application, or distributed monitoring capabilities). Asynchronous beans can run using the J2EE security context of the creator J2EE component. These beans also can run with copies of other J2EE contexts, such as:

Internationalization context
Application profiles, which are not supported for J2EE 1.4 applications and deprecated for J2EE 1.3 applications
Work areas

Asynchronous bean interfaces

Four types of asynchronous beans exist:

Work object: There are two work interfaces that essentially accomplish the same goal. The legacy Asynchronous Beans work interface is com.ibm.websphere.asynchbeans.Work, and the CommonJ work interface is commonj.work.Work. A work object runs parallel to its caller using the work manager startWork or schedule method (startWork for legacy Asynchronous Beans and schedule for CommonJ). Applications implement work objects to run code blocks asynchronously. For more information on the Work interface, see the API documentation.
Timer listener: This interface is an object that implements the commonj\timers\TimerListener interface. Timer listeners are called when a high-speed transient timer expires. For more information on the TimerListener interface, see the API documentation.
Alarm listener: An alarm listener is an object that implements the com.ibm.websphere.asynchbeans.AlarmListener interface. Alarm listeners are called when a high-speed transient alarm expires. For more information on the AlarmListener interface, see the API documentation.
Event listener: An event listener can implement any interface. An event listener is a lightweight, asynchronous notification mechanism for asynchronous events within a single JVM. An event listener typically enables J2EE components within a single application to notify each other about various asynchronous events.

Supporting interfaces

Work manager: Work managers are thread pools that administrators create for J2EE applications. The administrator specifies the properties of the thread pool and a policy that determines which J2EE contexts the asynchronous bean inherits.
CommonJ Work manager: The CommonJ work manager is similar to the work manager. The difference between the two is that the CommonJ work manager contains a subset of the asynchronous beans work manager methods. Although CommonJ work manager functions in a J2EE 1.4 environment, each JNDI lookup of a work manager does not return a new instance of the WorkManager. All the JNDI lookup of work managers within a scope have the same instance.
Timer manager: Timer managers implement the commonj.timers.TimerManager interface, which enables J2EE applications, including servlets, EJB applications, and JCA Resource Adapters, to schedule future timer notifications and receive timer notifications. The timer manager for Application Servers specification provides an application-server supported alternative to using the J2SE java.util.Timer class, which is inappropriate for managed environments.
Event source: An event source implements the com.ibm.websphere.asynchbeans.EventSource interface. An event source is a system-provided object that supports a generic, type-safe asynchronous notification server within a single JVM. The event source enables event listener objects, which implement any interface to be registered. For more information on the EventSource interface, see the API documentation.
Event source events: Every event source can generate its own events, such as listener count changed. An application can register an event listener object that implements the class com.ibm.websphere.asynchbeans.EventSourceEvents. This action enables the application to catch events such as listeners being added or removed, or a listener throwing an unexpected exception. For more information on the EventSourceEvents class, see the API documentation.

Additional interfaces, including alarms and subsystem monitors, are introduced in the topic Developing Asynchronous scopes, which discusses some of the advanced applications of asynchronous beans.

Transactions

Every asynchronous bean method is called using its own transaction, much like container-managed transactions in typical enterprise beans. It is very similar to the situation when an Enterprise Java Beans (EJB) method is called with TX_NOT_SUPPORTED. The runtime starts a local transaction before invoking the method. The asynchronous bean method is free to start its own global transaction if this transaction is possible for the calling J2EE component. For example, if an enterprise bean creates the component, the method that creates the asynchronous bean must be TX_BEAN_MANAGED.

When you call an entity bean from within an asynchronous bean, for example, you must have a global transactional context available on the current thread. Because asynchronous bean objects start local transactional contexts, you can encapsulate all entity bean logic in a session bean that has a method marked as TX_REQUIRES or equivalent. This process establishes a global transactional context from which you can access one or more entity bean methods.

If the asynchronous bean method throws an exception, any local transactions are rolled back. If the method returns normally, any incomplete local transactions are completed according to the unresolved action policy configured for the bean. EJB methods can configure this policy using their deployment descriptor. If the asynchronous bean method starts its own global transaction and does not commit this global transaction, the transaction is rolled back when the method returns.

Access to J2EE component metadata

If an asynchronous bean is a J2EE component, such as a session bean, its own metadata is active when a method is called. If an asynchronous bean is a simple Java object, the J2EE component metadata of the creating component is available to the bean. Like its creator, the asynchronous bean can look up the java:comp namespace. This look up enables the bean to access connection factories and enterprise beans, just as it would if it were any other J2EE component. The environment properties of the creating component also are available to the asynchronous bean.

The java:comp namespace is identical to the one available for the creating component; the same restrictions apply. For example, if the enterprise bean or servlet has an EJB reference of java:comp/env/ejb/MyEJB, this EJB reference is available to the asynchronous bean. In addition, all of the connection factories use the same resource-sharing scope as the creating component.

Connection management

An asynchronous bean method can use the connections that its creating J2EE component obtained using java:comp resource references. (For more information on resource references, see References). However, the bean method must access those connections using a get, use or close pattern. There is no connection caching between method calls on an asynchronous bean. The connection factories or datasources can be cached, but the connections must be retrieved on every method call, used, and then closed. While the asynchronous bean method can look up connection factories using a global Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI) name, this is not recommended for the following reasons:

The JNDI name is hard coded in the application (for example, as a property or string literal).
The connection factories are not shared because there is no way to specify a sharing scope.

For code examples that demonstrate both the correct and the incorrect ways to access connections from asynchronous bean methods, see the topic Example: Asynchronous bean connection management.

Deferred start of Asynchronous Beans

Asynchronous beans support deferred start by allowing serialization of J2EE service context information. The WorkWithExecutionContext createWorkWithExecutionContext(Work r) method on the WorkManager interface will create a snapshot of the J2EE service contexts enabled on the WorkManager. The resulting WorkWithExecutionContext object can then be serialized and stored in a database or file. This is useful when it is necessary to store J2EE service contexts such as the current security identity or Locale and later inflate them and run some work within this context. The WorkWithExecutionContext object can run using the startWork() and doWork() methods on the WorkManager interface.

All WorkWithExecutionContext objects must be deserialized by the same application that serialized it. All EJBs and classes must be present in order for Java to successfully inflate the objects contained within.

Deferred start and security

The asynchronous beans security service context might require Common Secure Interoperability Version 2 (CSIv2) identity assertion to be enabled. Identity assertion is required when a WorkWithExecutionContext object is deserialized and run to Java Authentication and Authorization Service (JAAS) subject identity credential assignment. Review the following topics to better understand if you need to enable identity assertion, when using a WorkWithExecutionContext object:

Configuring Common Secure Interoperability V2 and Security Authentication Service authentication protocol
Identity Assertion

There are also issues with interoperating with WorkWithExecutionContext objects from different versions of the product. See Interoperating with asynchronous beans .