Generating a pattern-based application development environment for Enterprise JavaBeans

Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) is Java's component architecture for server-side distributed enterprise applications. The architecture of EJB applications is based on well-established solutions common to most distributed business systems, To utilize the architecture in an optimal way, proven EJB specific design solutions have been identified and collected as a set of design patterns. The use of these EJB design patterns as a tightly interconnected pattern system can significantly ease the development process of EJB based applications and improve the quality of the produced software. We will study in this paper how a general architectural tool (Fred) can be used to generate an EJB programming environment, when given the specifications of the EJB design patterns as input. This environment can be viewed as an architecture-centric wizard that guides the user through the development of the application, following the EJB design patterns.