Entity Beans / Handle - I
getHandle() method of EJB Object returns a Handle object identifying the corresponding EJB Object.
A Handle object is serializable (java.io.Serializable) so that a client may save this value and use it to obtain a reference to the same EJB Object from a different process or even system by passing this value to another client on another system.
The life time of Handle object is generally outlives the life time of the container since it generally refers a key representation in the persistent storage. For example employee records stay in this storage couple of years while server might observe crash every week or so.