In WebLogic Server, you configure database connectivity through JDBC data sources, either in your WebLogic domain configuration or in your enterprise application. A data source is a J2EE standard method of configuring connectivity to a database. Each WebLogic data source contains a pool of database connections. Applications look up the data source on the JNDI tree or in the local application context and then use a database connection from the pool of connections. Data sources and their connection pools provide connection management processes that help keep your system running efficiently.
You can optionally configure multi data sources, which provide load balancing and failover management between data sources.
If your applications were developed for previous WebLogic Server releases and they contain application-scoped JDBC data sources and connection pools, you may also need to create data source factories. Data source factories are used to create the legacy application-scoped data sources and connection pools when you deploy your applications. Data source factories also supply some default values for connections in the application-scoped connection pools. Note that data source factories are deprecated. They are included in this WebLogic Server release for backward compatibility only.