Getting Initial Context

[ravi inguva]

I have a doubt for getting the initial context is it always required to metion the properties specific to appserver as below
if (initContext == null) {
try {
Properties properties = new Properties();
// Get location of name service
properties.put(javax.naming.Context.PROVIDER_URL,
bundle.getString(“providerUrl” );
// Get name of initial context factory
properties.put(javax.naming.Context.INITIAL_CONTEXT_FACTORY,
bundle.getString(“nameService” );
initContext = new InitialContext(properties);
} catch (Exception e) {
// Error getting the initial context…
}
to get the reference of an EJB
but i followed a process by just creating the initial context object as below in a JSP or servlet
InitailContext ctx = new InitailContext()
it worked for me without specifying the properties

can anybody say me the advantages and disadvantages of both the approaches and also which the best approach
Thanks in advance

[Lasse Koskela]

If you are using the JNDI tree in the same appserver as your application is running, then it's of course more simple to use just new InitialContext().
But if you want your application to be more flexible (i.e. not prevent your application to fetch the EJB from another appserver instance without code changes), you should use the properties-constructor and read the properties from somewhere dynamically/cached/etc.

[Chris Mathews]

The jndi.properties file is used to allevate this platform dependency. See this link: http://java.sun.com/products/jndi/tutorial/beyond/env/source.html.
Best thing about this is that it doesn't require additional programming to read from the properties file.