local EJB reference

A reference in an enterprise bean to another enterprise bean expected to be running in the same Java virtual machine (JVM). The referenced bean must have a local home interface and a local interface. This type of reference gives the referencing enterprise bean local access to the referenced bean's methods without the overhead of remote references. For example, method parameters are passed by reference, not by value.

Each local EJB 2.1 reference has a corresponding ejb-local-ref entry in the deployment descriptor.