Discuss whether the EJB architecture would be suitable to implement a massively multiplayer online game. What would be the strengths and weaknesses of using EJB in this domain?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The EJB architecture makes it easier to develop distributed applications by hiding much of the complexity from the programmer. It does this by imposing a particular architectural pattern on applications, that is one where a potentially large number of clients access fairly coarse granularity resources and this needs protection in terms of security and transaction management, a pattern which works best for applications such as eCommerce or banking applications that fit naturally this style of architecture.
Massively multiplayer online games are quite a different class of application. For example, they require low latency interaction with the world views and also may tolerate weak consistency to support such low latency interaction. It is likely that the container-style interaction would not be right for this application domain although it would provide some support for the development of such applications. More importantly, it is likely that the non-functional properties (and the associated policies) provided for containers would not be right for this domain, for example for transaction management (multiplayer online games would not require full transaction management). There would also be question marks over whether an EJB implementation would scale in the right way to large number of online players, all requiring low latency interactions.