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Richard Monson-Haefel

Enterprise JavaBeans and JavaBeans are not the same thing; nor is one an extension of the other. They are both component models, based on Java, and created by Sun Microsystems, but their purpose and packages (base types and interfaces) are completely different.

JavaBeans
The original JavaBeans specification is based on the java.beans package which is a standard package in the JDK. Components built on the JavaBeans specification are intraprocess components that live in one address space and are typically used for Graphical User Interface (GUI) as visual widgets like buttons, tables, HTML viewers, etc.

Enterprise JavaBeans
The EJB specification is based on the javax.ejb package, which is a standard extension package. Components built on the EJB specification are interprocess components that live in multiple address spaces as distributed object. These components are used as transactional business objects that are accessed as remote objects.