The getInstance() method is used to get a reference to a Seam session bean component stub, which can then be used to remotely execute methods against your component. This method returns a singleton for the specified component, so calling it twice in a row with the same component name will return the same instance of the component.
To continue our example from before, if we have created a new customer and we now wish to save it, we would pass it to the saveCustomer() method of our customerAction component:
