Managed and nonmanaged environments
The connection, transaction and security qualities of service can either be managed by the application server or they can be provided by the Java™ application.
In a managed environment, a JEE application server such as WebSphere® Application Server manages the connections, transactions, and security. In this situation, the application developer does not have to provide the code for these.
In a nonmanaged environment, the Java application uses the resource adapters directly without the intervention of a JEE application server. In this situation the application must contain code for the management of connections, transactions and security.