The Local Interface
		When you call an EJB Object through a home interface, many tasks must occur.  The data must be marshalled and unmarshalled, the EJBObject must perform the middleware services, the server has to perform its business logic, and then the enitre process must happen in reverse to send the result back to the client.  Understandably, this takes time.   You can speed things up with the local home interface.  The container creates a corresponding object, the local home object.   This removes the process of creating stubs and skeletons, marshalling, unmarshalling, and sending data over the network. The local object still handles the necessary middleware tasks, so you do not compromise these services. Component interface refers to either remote or local interfaces. But it can't be all roses.... As the name implies, the calls to a local home interface must be made locally.  For example, a bean instance can call the local methods of another bean instance on the same application server.  If the bean instances reside on different application servers, they must use a remote, not local, interface. Local method calls use pass by reference, not pass by value.  Deployment Descriptors