Method for navigating beans using filters and container managed relationships

A method, in a data processing system, for deploying at least two beans, comprising:

• defining a relationship between the at least two beans in a deployment descriptor;
• defining, in the deployment descriptor, a filter on the relationship between the at least two beans, wherein the defined filter includes one or more attributes that are a subject of the filter and wherein the filter, when executed, returns one or more beans having the one or more attributes, wherein the filter is defined declaratively in the deployment descriptor of a definition of the relationship, wherein defining the filter declaratively in the deployment descriptor allows the filter to be accessible to clients of the definition of the relationship through a local interface such that the filter is exposed on the local interface of the definition of the relationship, wherein exposing the filter on the local interface negates a generation of additional code to implement filters for each conceivable type of entity bean or group of entity beans requested by a client method and allows the client method to be navigated using the defined filter, and wherein defining a filter on the relationship comprises:
• providing a filter tag in the deployment descriptor identifying a portion of the deployment descriptor as being associated with the filter;
• and
• providing a filter definition in association with the filter tag, wherein the filter definition further includes a designation of one or more parameters that may be passed into the filter to control the operation of the filter, wherein the one or more parameters comprises a logical operator parameter identifying a logical operator parameter to be applied to one or more predicates generated based on the filter definition, and wherein the at least one method that implements the filter includes a query language statement having a WHERE clause, and wherein the one or more predicates are combined with the WHERE clause using the logical operator parameter;
• and
• deploying the at least two beans based on the deployment descriptor, wherein at least one method is generated during deployment that implements the filter defined in the deployment descriptor, wherein deploying the beans based on the deployment descriptor comprises:
• generating a query language statement based on the defined relationship;
• interpreting the defined filter in the deployment descriptor to generate one or more predicates;
• and
• applying the one or more predicates to the generated query language statement.