What is the difference between a regular object and a JavaBean?

The difference lies in adhering to naming conventions (capital letter after "get/set/is") for property access methods, having a no-argument constructor, and serializability. This allows JavaBeans to be used with frameworks and tools based on introspection.

A regular object may not follow these rules.

public class SimpleObject {
    private String name;

    public SimpleObject(String name) { // Any constructor
        this.name = name;
    }

    public String retrieveName() { // Non-standard naming for getter
        return name;
    }
}

import java.io.Serializable;

public class JavaBean implements Serializable { // Serializable
    private String name;

    public JavaBean() { // No-argument constructor
    }

    public String getName() { // Standard getter naming
        return name;
    }

    public void setName(String name) { // Standard setter naming
        this.name = name;
    }
}

Key differences:

Criterion	Regular object	JavaBean
No-arg constructor	Not mandatory	Mandatory
Method naming	Any	get/set/is + property name
Serializability	Not mandatory	Recommended/Mandatory for some frameworks
Usage	General purpose	Component model, frameworks (Spring, formerly EJB)