As stated in the specification, the purpose of the Extensible Runtime Containment and Services Protocol is "to introduce the concept of a relationship between a Component and its environment, or Container, wherein a newly instantiated Component is provided with a reference to its Container or Embedding Context. The Container, or Embedding Context not only establishes the hierarchy or logical structure, but it also acts as a service provider that Components may interrogate in order to determine, and subsequently employ, the services provided by their Context."

Overview of the BeanContext API

This section introduces extensible mechanisms and represents inheritance diagram of the BeanContext API.

Bean Context #1: Containment Only

This section teaches how to use the BeanContextSupport class to provide the basic BeanContext functionality.

Bean Context #2: Containment and Services

This section teaches how to use service capability defined by the BeanContextServices interface.

AWT Containers and the BeanContextProxy Interface

This section describes how an AWT Container can act as a BeanContext.

Additional Resources

• The Extensible Runtime Containment and Services Protocol Specification
• The java.beans.beancontext API documentation