The “Pareto Principle” also referred to as the 80/20 (or 90/10) rule, this states that a small number of causes (10–20%) are responsible for most (80–90%) of the effect. In the architectural context, this emphasizes the value of finding good solutions to common problems, rather than always living with the complexity of solutions to rarer, more complex problems.
According to Rod Johnson, creator of the Spring Framework, this applies to EJB. He goes on to say:
EJB stands on the wrong side of the Pareto Principle. It imposes undue complexity on the majority of cases to support the special requirements of the minority. For example, perhaps 10% of applications need distributed business objects; EJB is an infrastructure closely associated with distribution. EJB 2.1 and earlier entity beans are designed to be independent of the data store; the great majority of J2EE applications use relational databases, and gain no benefit from this. (While it offers a portability between data stores that’s of more theoretical interest than practical value, it doesn’t shine with object databases either. They are best accessed using their own rich APIs, or using a solution such as JDO.)
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