A session Bean's fields contain the state of the conversation and are transient. If the server or client crashes, the session Bean is gone. A session Bean is often used with one or more entity Beans and for complex operations on the data. Session Beans Entity Beans Fields contain conversation state. Represents data in a database.
Handles database access for client.
Shares access for multiple users. Life of client is life of Bean. Persists as long as data exists. Can be transaction aware. Does not survive server crashes.