Systems and methods in accordance with the present invention improve upon standard J2EE Connector Architecture implementations by adding functionality not included in the Architecture specification. An improved implementation can include, for example, packaging and development interfaces that allow any J2EE-compliant resource adapter to plug into J2EE applications in a modular manner. A connection manager can provide a scalable application environment that can support a large number of clients requiring access to an EIS. A connection manager can also provide active connection pool management and deployment. A transaction manager can allow transaction management across multiple resource managers, while a resource adapter can provide support for integrated error logging and tracing. A password converter tool can be used with the security management contract to parse and encrypt any passwords in the deployment descriptor.This description is not intended to be a complete description of, or limit the scope of, the invention. Other features, aspects, and objects of the invention can be obtained from a review of the specification, the figures, and the claims.