# Developing Entity Beans

An entity EJB models a real-world business object that persists as a record in a relational database. Entity beans are persistent, allow shared access, have primary keys, and may participate in relationships with other entity beans. All topics listed below discuss development of container-managed persistence (CMP) entity beans.

## Topics Included in This Section

Getting Started with Entity Beans

This topic provides an overview of entity beans.

Defining an Entity Bean

This topic discusses how to create an entity bean in WebLogic, what an entity bean definition minimally must contain, how to remove a bean instance, and provides a short introduction to the various interfaces extended/implemented by an entity bean definition.

Automatic Primary Key Generation

This topic discusses how to auto-generate primary keys when creating a new entity bean.

Entity Relationships

This topic discusses how to define an entity relationship between two CMP entity beans.

Query Methods and EJB QL

This topic discusses how to use EJB QL and WebLogic QL in the definition of CMP select and find methods.

The Life Cycle of an Entity Bean

This topic discusses the life cycle of an entity bean.

Accelerating Entity Bean Data Access

This topic discusses a number of WebLogic-specific features to reduce data access latency for CMP entity beans.

Bean-Managed Persistence

This topic introduces bean-managed persistence (BMP) entity beans.

Related Topics

Tutorial: Enterprise JavaBeans

This tutorial provides a step-by-step guide to developing Enterprise JavaBeans.

Enterprise JavaBean Samples

This topic presents a collection of Enterprise JavaBean samples. Each sample describes a small set of EJB development features and techniques.

Enterprise JavaBeans

This 'How Do I...?' section presents a number of step-by-step procedures on how to develop Enterprise JavaBeans.

Enterprise JavaBean Annotations Reference

This topic provides reference documentation about the ejbgen tags used with Enterprise JavaBeans classes.