Fortunately, it's optional if you already understand how and why to use the JavaBeans package. Perhaps you already understand Beans through reading an entertaining and enlightening series of articles on JavaBeans in JavaWorld , for example. JavaBeans turns classes into software components by providing several new features. Some of these features are specific to Beans. Others, like serialization, can apply to any class, Bean or otherwise, but are crucial to the understanding and use of Beans.
Software components have properties , which are attributes of the object.
Customization is the process of configuring a Bean for a particular task. The new event handling scheme in Java 1.1 was created in part to ease communication between Beans. Beans may be dissected by IDEs or by other classes through a process called introspection . Let's look at each one of these capabilities in a bit more depth. Sun Microsystems maintains a Web site for JavaBeans.