How does PicoContainer compare to EJB containers?
PicoContainer is rather different. EJB traditionally has loads of things you must extend, implement, provide and throw. EJB itself is also not an Inversion of Control (IoC) design. It is close in that components are managed by a container, but the cumbersome and static nature of the JNDI lookups ensure that it is not actually IoC. PicoContainer is not a superset of EJB though, as it provides no remoting capability out of the box.