Represents processes that involve many interactions with a client.
Maintains its state between calls by the client
Have very short lifetime but long enough for the client to finish the transaction.
Dedicated to a single client and cannot be accessed by other clients.
e.g., Web based shopping cart -- browsing catalog, selects items, buys or quits or saves cart for future use.
Stateless Session Beans:
Provides business methods that execute one logical unit of work.
No states and hence not dedicated to a single client.
Immediately processes information it receives from the client or external resources.
e.g., cashier for Web-based business -- methods for applying discount and calculating taxes, or stock quote lookup.