The base resource to use JCA CCI is the ConnectionFactory interface. The connector used must provide an implementation of this interface.

To use your connector, you can deploy it on your application server and fetch the ConnectionFactory from the server's JNDI environment (managed mode). The connector must be packaged as a RAR file (resource adapter archive) and contain a ra.xml file to describe its deployment characteristics. The actual name of the resource is specified when you deploy it. To access it within Spring, simply use Spring's JndiObjectFactoryBean / <jee:jndi-lookup> fetch the factory by its JNDI name.

Another way to use a connector is to embed it in your application (non-managed mode), not using an application server to deploy and configure it. Spring offers the possibility to configure a connector as a bean, through a provided FactoryBean (LocalConnectionFactoryBean). In this manner, you only need the connector library in the classpath (no RAR file and no ra.xml descriptor needed). The library must be extracted from the connector's RAR file, if necessary.

Once you have got access to your ConnectionFactory instance, you can inject it into your components. These components can either be coded against the plain CCI API or leverage Spring's support classes for CCI access (e.g. CciTemplate).

	Note
	When you use a connector in non-managed mode, you can't use global transactions because the resource is never enlisted / delisted in the current global transaction of the current thread. The resource is simply not aware of any global Java EE transactions that might be running.

In order to make connections to the EIS, you need to obtain a ConnectionFactory from the application server if you are in a managed mode, or directly from Spring if you are in a non-managed mode.

In a managed mode, you access a ConnectionFactory from JNDI; its properties will be configured in the application server.

<jee:jndi-lookup id="eciConnectionFactory" jndi-name="eis/cicseci"/>

In non-managed mode, you must configure the ConnectionFactory you want to use in the configuration of Spring as a JavaBean. The LocalConnectionFactoryBean class offers this setup style, passing in the ManagedConnectionFactory implementation of your connector, exposing the application-level CCI ConnectionFactory.

<bean id="eciManagedConnectionFactory" class="com.ibm.connector2.cics.ECIManagedConnectionFactory">
  <property name="serverName" value="TXSERIES"/>
  <property name="connectionURL" value="tcp://localhost/"/>
  <property name="portNumber" value="2006"/>
</bean>

<bean id="eciConnectionFactory" class="org.springframework.jca.support.LocalConnectionFactoryBean">
  <property name="managedConnectionFactory" ref="eciManagedConnectionFactory"/>
</bean>

	Note
	You can't directly instantiate a specific ConnectionFactory. You need to go through the corresponding implementation of the ManagedConnectionFactory interface for your connector. This interface is part of the JCA SPI specification.

JCA CCI allow the developer to configure the connections to the EIS using the ConnectionSpec implementation of your connector. In order to configure its properties, you need to wrap the target connection factory with a dedicated adapter, ConnectionSpecConnectionFactoryAdapter. So, the dedicated ConnectionSpec can be configured with the property connectionSpec (as an inner bean).

This property is not mandatory because the CCI ConnectionFactory interface defines two different methods to obtain a CCI connection. Some of the ConnectionSpec properties can often be configured in the application server (in managed mode) or on the corresponding local ManagedConnectionFactory implementation.

public interface ConnectionFactory implements Serializable, Referenceable {
  ...
  Connection getConnection() throws ResourceException;
  Connection getConnection(ConnectionSpec connectionSpec) throws ResourceException;
  ...
}

Spring provides a ConnectionSpecConnectionFactoryAdapter that allows for specifying a ConnectionSpec instance to use for all operations on a given factory. If the adapter's connectionSpec property is specified, the adapter uses the getConnection variant without argument, else the one with the ConnectionSpec argument.

<bean id="managedConnectionFactory"
    class="com.sun.connector.cciblackbox.CciLocalTxManagedConnectionFactory">
  <property name="connectionURL" value="jdbc:hsqldb:hsql://localhost:9001"/>
  <property name="driverName" value="org.hsqldb.jdbcDriver"/>
</bean>

<bean id="targetConnectionFactory"
    class="org.springframework.jca.support.LocalConnectionFactoryBean">
  <property name="managedConnectionFactory" ref="managedConnectionFactory"/>
</bean>

<bean id="connectionFactory"
    class="org.springframework.jca.cci.connection.ConnectionSpecConnectionFactoryAdapter">
  <property name="targetConnectionFactory" ref="targetConnectionFactory"/>
  <property name="connectionSpec">
    <bean class="com.sun.connector.cciblackbox.CciConnectionSpec">
      <property name="user" value="sa"/>
      <property name="password" value=""/>
    </bean>
  </property>
</bean>

If you want to use a single CCI connection, Spring provides a further ConnectionFactory adapter to manage this. The SingleConnectionFactory adapter class will open a single connection lazily and close it when this bean is destroyed at application shutdown. This class will expose special Connection proxies that behave accordingly, all sharing the same underlying physical connection.

<bean id="eciManagedConnectionFactory"
    class="com.ibm.connector2.cics.ECIManagedConnectionFactory">
  <property name="serverName" value="TEST"/>
  <property name="connectionURL" value="tcp://localhost/"/>
  <property name="portNumber" value="2006"/>
</bean>

<bean id="targetEciConnectionFactory"
    class="org.springframework.jca.support.LocalConnectionFactoryBean">
  <property name="managedConnectionFactory" ref="eciManagedConnectionFactory"/>
</bean>

<bean id="eciConnectionFactory"
    class="org.springframework.jca.cci.connection.SingleConnectionFactory">
  <property name="targetConnectionFactory" ref="targetEciConnectionFactory"/>
</bean>

	Note
	This ConnectionFactory adapter cannot directly be configured with a ConnectionSpec. Use an intermediary ConnectionSpecConnectionFactoryAdapter that the SingleConnectionFactory talks to if you require a single connection for a specific ConnectionSpec.