The Apache CXF JCA Connector is a J2EE Connector Architecture 1.5 resource adapter. It enables you to expose Web services to your J2EE applications and allows you to expose your J2EE applications as Web services.

The term Web services is used here to include SOAP over HTTP based services and any service that has been exposed as a Web service by Fuse Services Framework. The Apache CXF JCA Connector transparently connects your J2EE applications over multiple transports to any Fuse Services Framework-enabled back-end service.

	Note
	To use the Apache CXF JCA Connector your application server must support JCA 1.5 and EJB 2.1 or higher.

Figure 1.1 illustrates, at a high-level, how the Apache CXF JCA Connector exposes a Web service to a J2EE application. It acts as a bridge between J2EE and SOAP over HTTP Web services. This is the simplest example. It also illustrates that the Apache CXF JCA Connector can be used as a bridge between J2EE and a CORBA server that has been exposed as a Web service by Fuse Services Framework.

Figure 1.1. Connecting J2EE Applications to Web services

The Apache CXF JCA Connector resource adapter is packaged as a standard J2EE Connector Architecture resource adapter archive (RAR) file and is called cxf.rar. The cxf.rar file contains all of the classes that the Apache CXF JCA Connector needs to manage both inbound and outbound connections.

The Apache CXF JCA Connector deployment descriptor file, ra.xml, contains information about Apache CXF JCA Connector's resource implementation, configuration properties, transaction and security support. It describes the capabilities of the resource adapter and provides a deployer with enough information to properly configure the resource adapter in an application server environment.

An application server relies on the information in the deployment descriptor to know how to interact properly with the resource adapter. The deployment descriptor is packaged in the Apache CXF JCA Connector RAR file.

For information on how to use the Apache CXF JCA Connector to manage inbound connections, see Exposing a J2EE application as a Web Service.

For information on how to use the Apache CXF JCA Connector to manage outbound connections, see Exposing a Web Service to a J2EE Application.