In addition to the existing EJB caching options, you can develop read-only entity beans.
To use this function, you declare the bean type as read-only the same way you currently select the bean caching options, through a selection list within the application assembly tooling (either WebSphere Application Developer or the Application Server Toolkit).
Reloading is performed only in response to a business method invocation on the bean. When a business method is invoked, the EJB container checks to see whether either the reload interval time has expired or the absolute clock time for that day has passed (depending on whether INTERVAL, DAILY, or WEEKLY was used). If so, the container reloads the bean state.
When a read-only entity bean is invoked within a global transaction and the reload interval expires while the transaction is active, business method calls on the bean during that transaction continue to see the non-reloaded state of the bean for the duration of that transaction. That is, a snapshot of the bean state is effectively taken on the first business method invocation on that bean during a transaction, and that state continues to be in effect for that transaction until it completes. New invocations on that bean performed in a different transaction after the reload see the reloaded state.
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