Using EJBs between two separate JSF applications in Glassfish 4

[Jay Tai]

My development environment is Netbeans 8 and GF 4.0 app server, JSF Framework (Mojara). I have two applications. Application A is a user account management app which manages user profiles and security. Application B is a user interface which provides the user application data and is what users actually log into. I want to use an EJB Remote interface in Application A to allow users to view and edit their profiles.

I can't find much in the way of detailed tuitorials on how to correctly configure EJBs between 2 applications. I've tried JNDI lookups and EJB annotations, but I keep getting the exception:

java.lang.InstantiationException
	at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterConfig.<init>(ApplicationFilterConfig.java:135)
	at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.filterStart(StandardContext.java:5297)
	at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.start(StandardContext.java:5909)

...
Caused by: javax.naming.NamingException: ejb ref resolution error for remote business interfacecom.manaar.security.services.UserService [Root exception is java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: com.manaar.security.services.UserService]
	at com.sun.ejb.EJBUtils.lookupRemote30BusinessObject(EJBUtils.java:433)
	at com.sun.ejb.containers.RemoteBusinessObjectFactory.getObjectInstance(RemoteBusinessObjectFactory.java:75)
	at javax.naming.spi.NamingManager.getObjectInstance(NamingManager.java:321)

Some specific questions I have:

1) Are remote EJB interfaces deployed as part of an application sufficient to use from other applications or does a separate EJB module have to be created?
2) Is the fully qualified name of a deployed EJB the same name and package as the class name (assuming I did not change the name on deployment) in the GF server?
3) Does the glassfish-web.xml (or sun-web.xml) have to be configured with <ejb-ref> even if I'm using JNDI lookup?
4) What would be the correct JNDI name for an application deployed with the syntax <package-name><app-name>?
5) Are there any very detailed references or tutorials which explicitly cover how to use EJBs between different applications?


Any advice is really appreciated and please let me know if I need to give further details. My application code follows. Thanks in advance!

The remote service interface in application B is:

package com.manaar.security.services;

imports...

@Remote
public interface UserService {
    public List<Users> findAllUsers();
    public Users findByName(String userName);
    public void createUser(Users newUser);
    public void updateUser(Users updatedUser);
    public void adminUpdateUser(Users aUpdatedUser);
    public void deleteUser(Users userToDelete);
    
}

I also created an entity class and identical service interface in Application A, replacing the @Remote annotation with @Local

So the first page the displays when running Application A is a jsf page:

 <h:form>
                <h:commandLink value="Edit Profile" action="#{userPro.makeBean}" />
                <br/> 
                

                </h:form>

The bean for the clicked action is:

@ManagedBean
@SessionScoped
public class UserPro implements Serializable {

private String userName;
private Users LoggedUser;
  public String makeBean() {

        try {
            Context jndi = new InitialContext();
            UserService uServ = (UserService) jndi.lookup("com.manaar.security.services.UserService");
            userName = getUserName();
            loggedUser = uServ.findByName(userName);
            loggedUser.setUserName(userName);
            

        } catch (NamingException ex) {
            Logger.getLogger(UserPro.class.getName()).log(Level.SEVERE, null, ex);
        }
        return "/Users/AppUserProfile";
    }

  public String getUserName() {
        userName = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().getExternalContext().getRemoteUser();
        return userName;
    }

This is meant to capture the userName of the logged in user and return the user profile in the following form:

  <h:form>
                    <p>
                        <p:outputLabel value="User Name:  "/>
                        <h:outputText id="userName" value="#{userPro.loggedUser.firstName} "/>
                    </p>


                    <p>
                        <p:outputLabel value="Surname:  "/>
                        <h:outputText id="surName" value="#{userPro.loggedUser.surName}"/>
                    </p>

                    <p>
                        <p:outputLabel value="Date of Birth:"/>
                        <h:outputText value="#{userPro.loggedUser.dateOfBirth}"/>
                    </p>

                    <p>
                        <p:outputLabel value="Gender:"/>
                        <h:outputText value="#{userPro.loggedUser.gender}"/>
                    </p>