Data access resources

The connection between an enterprise application and an enterprise information system (EIS) is accomplished through the use of EIS-provided resource adapters, which are plugged into the application server. The resource adapter plays a central role in the integration and connectivity between an EIS and an application server. It serves as the point of contact between application components, application servers, and enterprise information systems. A resource adapter must communicate with other components based on well-defined contracts specified by the Java EE Connector Architecture (JCA).

Generic inflow context enables a resource adapter to control the execution context of the Work instances it submits to the application server. By submitting a Work instance that implements the WorkContextProvider interface, a resource adapter can provide various types of context to the WAS. If the application server supports the provided context types, the generic work context mechanism sets the work contexts as the execution context of the Work instance. The context remains effective during the execution the Work instance.

Security inflow context uses generic work context by enabling a resource adapter to establish security information in the execution context of the Work instances that it submits to the application server. By submitting a Work instance that provides context types by implementing the new standardized SecurityContext interface, the application can establish and set an execution context containing the security identities and credentials for a Work instance. The identities and credentials remain effective during the execution of the Work instance, ensuring secure message delivery to Java EE message endpoints.

WebSphere Application Server supports work context types that implement the new standardized SecurityContext, TransactionContext and HintsContext interfaces. The generic inflow context mechanism accepts implementations of the HintsContext interface, but the application server does not act upon these implementations of the HintsContext interface. The security inflow context mechanism does not map user identities from the EIS domain to identities in an application server domain. Identities provided by implementations of SecurityContext must be in a security domain of application server.

Related concepts

Java EE connector security

Connection management architecture

Relational resource adapters and JCA

JDBC providers

Data sources

Related tasks

Task overview: Accessing data from applications

Data access bean types