Connector 1.5 Support in the Application Server

The Application Server supports the development and deployment of resource adapters that are compatible with Connector 1.5 specification (and, for backward compatibility, the Connector 1.0 specification).

The Connector 1.0 specification defines the outbound connectivity system contracts between the resource adapter and the Application Server. The Connector 1.5 specification introduces major additions in defining system level contracts between the Application Server and the resource adapter with respect to the following:

• Inbound connectivity from an EIS - The Connector 1.5 defines the transaction and message inflow system contracts for achieving inbound connectivity from an EIS. The message inflow contract also serves as a standard message provider pluggability contract, thereby allowing various providers of messaging systems to seamlessly plug in their products with any application server that supports the message inflow contract.

• Resource adapter life cycle management and thread management - These features are available through the lifecycle and work management contracts.

Connector Architecture for JMS and JDBC

In the Administration Console, connector, JMS, and JDBC resources are handled differently, but they use the same underlying Connector architecture. In the Application Server, all communication to an EIS, whether to a message provider or an RDBMS, happens through the Connector architecture. To provide JMS infrastructure to clients, the Application Server uses the Sun Java System Message Queue software. To provide JDBC infrastructure to clients, the Application Server uses its own JDBC system resource adapters. The application server automatically makes these system resource adapters available to any client that requires them.

For more information about JMS in the Application Server, see Chapter 14, Using the Java Message Service. For more information about JDBC in the Application Server, see Chapter 11, Using the JDBC API for Database Access.

Connector Configuration

The Application Server does not need to use sun-ra.xml, which previous Application Server versions used, to store server-specific deployment information inside a Resource Adapter Archive (RAR) file. (However, the sun-ra.xml file is still supported for backward compatibility.) Instead, the information is stored in the server configuration. As a result, you can create multiple connector connection pools for a connection definition in a functional resource adapter instance, and you can create multiple user-accessible connector resources (that is, registering a resource with a JNDI name) for a connector connection pool. In addition, dynamic changes can be made to connector connection pools and the connector resource properties without restarting the Application Server.