WAS v8.5 > Administer applications and their environment > Welcome to administering Mail, URLs, and other Java EE resources > Administer resource environment entries > Configure new resource environment entries to map logical environment resource names to physical namesResource environment providers and resource environment entries
A resource environment reference maps a logical name used by the client application to the physical name of an object.
Not all objects bound into the server JNDI namespace are intended for use by an application client. For example, the WebSphere Application Server client run time does not support the use of Java 2 Connector (J2C) objects on the client. The object needs to be remotable, and the client-side implementations must be made available on the application client run-time classpath.
Resource environment references are different than resource references. Resource environment references allow the application client to use a logical name to look up a resource bound into the server JNDI namespace. A resource reference allows the application to use a logical name to look up a local J2EE resource. The J2EE specification does not specify a particular implementation of a resource.
Related
Configure new resource environment entries to map logical environment resource names to physical names