Programming Guides › Connector Programming Guide › Connector Concepts › Connection Management

Connection Management

Every CA IAM CS connector uses the getConnectionManager() method to provide an instance of the com.ca.jcs.ConnectionManager class to its constituent processors and the CA IAM CS framework.

We encourage connector developers to use these abstractions to interface with a connection pool to achieve the following benefits:

• Improve throughput by keeping heavy-weight connections to the endpoint available, rather than having to establish and close a connection every time one is needed.
• Helps ensure that the pool enforces a limit on the number of connections to the endpoint, limiting both memory usage inside CA IAM CS and the amount of work each connector can queue up with the endpoint.

The CA IAM CS framework automatically deactivates and activates a connector when the value of any of attribute stored at the connector level of the DIT which has the isConnection Boolean metadata property set to true, changes. For example, when the credentials, host or port used to connect to the endpoint are modified, CA IAM CS deactivates, and reactivates the connector. CA IAM CS closes the current connection manager and then reopens a new connection configured with the new settings.

Some connectors use multiple forms of connectivity to the endpoint. In this case, code the built-in connection manager as the primary form of connectivity and deal with the other forms in custom code. For example, with custom accessors such as getConnectionManagerOtherAPI(). However, all connection managers can use the connection manager support classes allowing for minimal coding and customizing through the connector.xml file.

Typically, connection managers are set up and torn down in the activate() and deactivate() methods for your connector, which are defined in the com.ca.jcs. Activatable interface (also implemented by all styles of processors). As a general guide it is a good idea to setup anything of interest to multiple styles of processors in the connector's activate() method, to avoid concerns about the exact order of activation.