The simplest way to convert EJB 2.0 project to EJB 3.0

Question

What is the simplest way to convert EJB 2.0 (WebLogic 8.1) project to EJB 3.0 (OAS or WebLogic etc)?
I found just this article "Converting an EJB 2.0 Entity Bean to EJB 3.0", which could automate this process, but forced to do too much manual manipulations.

Answer 1

IMO, you can't really convert an EJB 2.1 project to an EJB 3.x project. You can however migrate and this is a project by itself. Some more resources:

• Migrating EJB 2.1 Entity and Session Beans to EJB 3.0
• Migrating EJB 2.x applications to EJB 3.0

Answer 2

Use Intellij's "Apply EJB 3.0 Style" tool. It automates a lot of the painful steps, especially replacing ejb-jar.xml configurations with annotations. Migration can be applied incrementally (you select the ejb's) or all at once. It does other steps for you as well; details here:

http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/webhelp/migrating-to-ejb-3-0.html

I found this to be immensely helpful and worth the price of an Intellij license all by itself for the number of hours it saved me. I did not find anything comparable in either Eclipse or Netbeans.

An old, but helpful, additional resource: http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-08-2006/jw-0814-ejb.html?page=1