The J2EE application directly manages connections, instead of using the container's connection management facilities.
The J2EE standard forbids the direct management of connections. It requires that applications use the container's resource management facilities to obtain connections to resources. Every major web application container provides pooled database connection management as part of its resource management framework. Duplicating this functionality in an application is difficult and error prone, which is part of the reason it is forbidden under the J2EE standard.

Primary

Implementation

Other
Quality Degradation

Automated Static Analysis
Automated static analysis, commonly referred to as Static Application Security Testing (SAST), can find some instances of this weakness by analyzing source code (or binary/compiled code) without having to execute it. Typically, this is done by building a model of data flow and control flow, then searching for potentially-vulnerable patterns that connect "sources" (origins of input) with "sinks" (destinations where the data interacts with external components, a lower layer such as the OS, etc.)
High

In the following example, the class DatabaseConnection opens and manages a connection to a database for a J2EE application. The method openDatabaseConnection opens a connection to the database using a DriverManager to create the Connection object conn to the database specified in the string constant CONNECT_STRING.

public class DatabaseConnection {
private static final String CONNECT_STRING = "jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/mysqldb";private Connection conn = null;
public DatabaseConnection() {}
public void openDatabaseConnection() {try {conn = DriverManager.getConnection(CONNECT_STRING);} catch (SQLException ex) {...}}
// Member functions for retrieving database connection and accessing database...
}

The use of the DriverManager class to directly manage the connection to the database violates the J2EE restriction against the direct management of connections. The J2EE application should use the web application container's resource management facilities to obtain a connection to the database as shown in the following example.

public class DatabaseConnection {

private static final String DB_DATASRC_REF = "jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/mysqldb";private Connection conn = null;
public DatabaseConnection() {}
public void openDatabaseConnection() {
try {
InitialContext ctx = new InitialContext();DataSource datasource = (DataSource) ctx.lookup(DB_DATASRC_REF);conn = datasource.getConnection();

} catch (NamingException ex) {...}} catch (SQLException ex) {...}
}
// Member functions for retrieving database connection and accessing database...
}

J2EE Bad Practices: getConnection()

SFP3
Use of an improper API

Allowed
This CWE entry is at the Variant level of abstraction, which is a preferred level of abstraction for mapping to the root causes of vulnerabilities.
Carefully read both the name and description to ensure that this mapping is an appropriate fit. Do not try to 'force' a mapping to a lower-level Base/Variant simply to comply with this preferred level of abstraction.

7 Pernicious Kingdoms
2006-07-19
Draft 3
2006-07-19

Eric Dalci
Cigital
2008-07-01
updated Time_of_Introduction

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2008-09-08
updated Relationships, Other_Notes, Taxonomy_Mappings, Weakness_Ordinalities

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2010-04-05
updated Demonstrative_Examples

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2011-06-01
updated Common_Consequences

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2011-06-27
updated Common_Consequences

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2012-05-11
updated Relationships

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2014-06-23
updated Description, Other_Notes

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2014-07-30
updated Relationships, Taxonomy_Mappings

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2017-11-08
updated Causal_Nature, Relationships

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2020-02-24
updated References, Relationships

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2023-04-27
updated Detection_Factors, Relationships, Time_of_Introduction

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2023-06-29
updated Mapping_Notes

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2025-04-03
4.17
2025-04-03
updated Demonstrative_Examples

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2025-12-11
4.19
2025-12-11
updated Applicable_Platforms

J2EE Bad Practices: getConnection()