BD->SFSB(facade)-> VLH->DAO-> ....
I have made the bean stateful, because then it can hold a reference to the VLH. The VLH might be a POJO.
An extract from Core Design patterns :-
When an application uses enterprise beans in the business tier, it may be preferable to implement a session bean that uses the ValueListHandler. In this case, the session bean simply fronts an instance of a ValueListHandler. Thus, the session bean may be implemented as a stateful session bean to hold on to the list handler as its state, and thus may simply act as a facade
What's confusing me is, I have read in many places that the VLH should be implemented as a session bean. And even in the core design patterns, further down it explains like this :-
Since the Value List Handler is a session bean, it may appear as a specialized Session Facade. However, in isolation, it is a specialized session bean rather than a specialized Session Facade. A Session Facade has other motivations and characteristics, and it is much coarser grained.
So, what's the best way to implement the VLH??? . I don't want to design with too many beans with no apparent reason