the truth about entity beans

[Vin�cius de Faria Silva]

I've been following discussions about the pos and cons of entity beans for 2 years. I'm not sure yet if this approach is good or not, mainly in terms of performance. I hear a lot of system architects say that entity beans are slow. What's the true about this issue? Entity Beans are slow? If not, which great J2EE systems(in production) are based on entity beans? Are there benchmarks which proof that entity beans can provide good performance?   regards,   Vin�cius