Primary Key Class - Public field or public getter/setter ?

[Vince Hon]

On HFB p. 333 - "Rules for Primary Keys"

point 4:

A compound key class must be made up of fields that are defined as persistent fields in the bean class.The fields in the bean class must have upblic accessor methods

This only say "Compound key class" needs public accessor methods.
How about "Single key class" ?

refer to p. 370 q. 13

What's true about an CMP entity bean's primary key ?

C. All fields in the primary key class must be declared public.
//opt C is correct.

Does it mean that Single key class is not required to have public accessor ?

can I:

public Class SingleKeyClass{
 private int field1;
 public int getField1(){..};
 public void setField1(int value){..};
} 

?

[Chengwei Lee]

When we talk about single field primary keys, we're usually refering to objects such as String, Integer, Long, Short, Character, etc. You usually won't be defining a custom class to contain just a single String since you've the option of declaring it as your primary key.

  
<prim-key-class>java.lang.String</prim-key-class>
<prim-key-class>com.wombat.empl.EmployeeID</prim-key-class>

This is taken from the DTD file. The first example would be our single field primary key & the second being the multiple field primary key. Your entity bean would usually contains other fields & your compound primary key class should be made up of some of these fields.

[Vince Hon]

Thx Chengwai. I am clear about the single field primary class now.

However, for compound key, here is the question.

refer to p. 370 q. 13

What's true about an CMP entity bean's primary key ?

C. All fields in the primary key class must be declared public.
//opt C is correct

Why option C is correct ?
As I know, "Compound key class" needs only "public accessor methods" (the fields can be private).

  
public Class SingleKeyClass{ 
  private int field1; 
 
  public int getField1(){..}; 
  public void setField1(int value){..};
} 

[Chengwei Lee]

The EJB specifications mandate that all the fields that made up the compound primary key class had to be declared public (pg 203).