This contradicts the intended use of ejbRemove() for entity beans, for which ejbRemove() is called when the bean is being destroyed in the persistent store. If you take a close look at the entity
EJB state diagram, another container callback is used to notify a bean that it is being moved from the "pooled" state to the "does not exist" state: unsetEntityContext(). As an instructor to hundreds of students who're learning EJBs, it's often a nightmare to explain to them that ejbRemove() for session beans and unsetEntityContext() for entity beans represent the same event transitions, but ejbRemove() for entity beans really means destruction.
Here's a proposal, though the migration to support it would be difficult: how about changing ejbRemove() in the SessionBean interface to be unsetSessionContext() and alter ejbRemove() in the entity bean interface to be ejbDestroy()? In this scenario, the ambiguous ejbRemove() wouldn't exist in either interface and consistency would exist between setXXXContext() and unsetXXXXContext() callbacks.
http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2001/02/28/ejb.html 
