This image shows the following main elements: Application Explorer (design time), J2EE Application Server, Enterprise Java Bean (EJB) or Servlet Container, JCA container containing JCA connector and the adapter, and an Oracle RDBMS. To the right of the illustration are a number of elements, each indicating a distinct EIS. The central elements are superimposed upon each other in the following order to indicate where each is deployed: the adapters reside in the adapter framework, which is in the JCA connector, which is in the JCA container, which itself is on top of the J2EE Application Server.

Application Explorer is shown separately to the left of the J2EE Application Server. A bidirectional arrow between Application Explorer and the EJB or servlet container indicates the bidirectional connection between the two. On the right side of the illustration, a series of bidirectional arrows between the adapters and the multiple EIS elements indicate that the adapters connect to each EIS to complete service requests, receive the responses back from the EIS, and then communicate the responses through the framework and JCA back to Application Explorer.