My question revolves around remote interfaces and using the persistence API. An example might give more insight into my question? I have 3 tables Customer, Order, LineItem with the corresponding object associations: | class Customer { | | long id; | List<Order> orders; | | public long getId() {}; | public List<Order> getOrders(){}; | } | | class Order { | | long id; | List<LineItem> lineItems; | | public long getId() {}; | public List<LineItem> getLineItems() {}; | public Customer getCustomer() {}; | } | | Class LineItem { | | long id; | | public long getId() {}; | public Order getOrder() {}; | } | When using a session bean that implements a remote interface I make a call similar to the following? | @Stateless | class OrderBean implements RemoteOrder { | | public List<Order> getOrders(long custId) { | return em.createNamedQuery(?order.findByCustomerId?) | .setParmater(?custId?, custId) | .getResultList(); | } | } | 1) Now this would work great in a Servlet/JSP that was running in the same JVM, but I am accessing this from a web service. I am wondering what is the ?standard? way to return the persistent data to the web service client? Is it off load everything into value objects? Something has to be done otherwise I will always get exceptions when trying to access the lazy children of Customer. Even if I do a FETCH JOIN for Customer.orders then the problem nest down to Order.lineItems, should I FETCH JOIN this to? 2) What about the cyclic call during marhsalling from Customer.getOrders() then Orders.getCustomers()? I have yet to find documentation ?anywhere? ;) that defines a standard way to handle this or should we still develop the J2EE way and use Transfer Objects (J2EE design Pattern), but I thought the persistence layer and POJOs was supposed to remove this extra layer from the enterprise application. 3) If the Order Pojo had some header information an thats all I needed for a particluar web service request, meaning I do not want the lineitems, should I create another pojo object mapped to the table but with only the fields that represent the header? Should I create a Transfer Object/Value Object? I guess I am some confused of when or if I should use the Pojo when returning data for remote calls. I have read the J2EE Design Patterns and maybe those Patterns still apply I just thought that pojos where supposed to take place of value and transfer objects. Thanks for any help :) J View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=3962499#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...