Answer: Apparently most of the time that it's used in
J2EE.
According to MartinFowler.com, a "Session Facade" in the pure sense should not contain any domain logic whatsoever. Rather, it should simply act as something of a bulk-accessor (e.g., return a value-object assembled with data gathered from one or more entity beans).
The typical use of a "Session Facade" in J2EE is to do more than just access entity beans, such as to manage complex workflow. In this case, it is a misnomer to call it that. Rather, according to Mr. Fowler, it is a "Use Case Controller", which should not be confused with "Session Facade" as the two are seperate
patterns.
I just happened upon this and thought I'd share... any thoughts?
http://martinfowler.com/isa/useCaseController.html Cheers,
David
[ January 18, 2002: Message edited by: David Carel ]