pool threads and have more control over its runtime environment. The resource adapter can control the transaction context with which work instances are executed. Transaction inflow management Transaction inflow management enables a resource adapter to propagate an imported transaction to an application server. This contract also allows a resource adapter to transmit transaction completion and crash recovery calls initiated by an EIS, and ensures that the Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation and Durability (ACID) properties of the imported transaction are preserved. Message inflow management Message inflow management enables a resource adapter to asynchronously deliver messages to message endpoints residing in the application server, independent of the specific messaging style, messaging semantics and messaging infrastructure used to deliver messages. This contract also serves as the standard message provider pluggability contract that allows a wide range of message providers (Java Message Service (JMS), Java API for XML Messaging (JAXM), and so on) to be plugged into any Java EE compatible application server with a resource adapter. EIS Integration JCA adapters can be built to integrate with various Enterprise Information System such as Siebel Systems, SAP AG, Great Plains Systems, Oracle Applications, etc. Siebel provides API to integrate with various platforms like Java, C++, .NET, Visual Basic, etc. For Java it provides an interface called 'Java Data Bean' (JDB). The Siebel adapter provides data access via the JDB API. Great Plains Systems provides an interface called eConnect to integrate with other platforms. SAP provides an interface for Java called SAP Java Connector (SAP JCo). External links The J2EE Connector homepage contains a lot of useful information, so does IBM's article on choosing among JCA, JMS and Web services. JSR 112 (JCA 1.5) JSR 322: Java EE Connector Architecture 1.6 (JCA 1.6) JSR 16 (JCA 1.0) http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2004/03/24/j2eeca.html Java enterprise platform Java specification requests