Connection management for access to enterprise information systems (EIS) in the application server is based on the J2EE Connector Architecture (JCA) specification. The connection between the enterprise application and EIS is done with EIS-provided resource adapters, which are plugged into the application server. The architecture specifies the connection management, transaction management, and security contracts between the application server and EIS.

The Connection Manager in the application server pools and manages connections. It is capable of managing connections obtained through resource adapters defined by the JCA specification and data sources defined by the JDBC 2.x Extensions specification.

Data Access Resources

JDBC applications that access relational databases using the JDBC or Embedded Structured Query language in Java (SQLJ) API indirectly use a WebSphere Application Server resource adapter specifically designed to work with JDBC data sources.
Java Messaging Service (JMS) support enables applications to exchange messages asynchronously with other JMS clients by using JMS destinations (queues or topics). Applications can use message-driven beans to retrieve messages automatically from JMS destinations and JCA endpoints without explicitly polling for messages.