A transient entity bean is an EJB which appears to clients to be a persistent object (that is, it is retrieved using a key via findByPrimaryKey()) but which is actually only retained for as long as the container keeps it in the object pool. Something like,
public QueryPK ejbFindByPrimaryKey(QueryPK key) { return key; },
// no implementations for ejbCreate()
public ejbLoad() {
// execute search based on query from getPrimaryKey()
},
public ejbStore() { /* don't save; just disappear */ },