The Java EE spec [Table EE.6-1 in the Java EE 6 platform spec] does not require support for Connectors in application clients and the Connectors specification also doesn't address in any detail how application servers may support managed usage of a Connector in a Java EE application client. Some implementations (like GlassFish) will provide a local managed environment for a Connector in the application client's VM (ie replicate the pooling and other runtime infrastructure surrounding Connection mananement in the appclient's VM) and some others provide a proxy Connection handle in the application client that is a proxy to ManagedConnections in the server. The latter implementations may provide their own proxy that implements the Connection interface to the app-client and wire all method invocations on it to a valid "Connection" in the server or use other techniques thereby obviating the need to pass a non-serializable ManagedConnection to the application client's VM.