Outbound and Inbound Contracts

The Connector Architecture defines the following outbound contracts, system-level contracts between an application server and an EIS that enable outbound connectivity to an EIS.

• The connection management contract supports connection pooling, a technique that enhances application performance and scalability. Connection pooling is transparent to the application, which simply obtains a connection to the EIS.

• The transaction management contract extends the connection management contract and provides support for management of both local and XA transactions.

  A local transaction is limited in scope to a single EIS system, and the EIS resource manager itself manages such transaction. An XA transaction or global transaction can span multiple resource managers. This form of transaction requires transaction coordination by an external transaction manager, typically bundled with an application server. A transaction manager uses a two-phase commit protocol to manage a transaction that spans multiple resource managers or EISs, and uses one-phase commit optimization if only one resource manager is participating in an XA transaction.

• The security management contract provides mechanisms for authentication, authorization, and secure communication between a Java EE server and an EIS to protect the information in the EIS.

  A work security map matches EIS identities to the application server domain’s identities.

Inbound contracts are system contracts between a Java EE server and an EIS that enable inbound connectivity from the EIS: pluggability contracts for message providers and contracts for importing transactions.