This method is inherited by all the data source classes. As part of its referenceable support, Microsoft SQL Server 2005 JDBC Driver exposes this class that implements an ObjectFactory. Java Application Servers will call getReference on a data source class, and this will create a Reference object that internally uses the class name as its class factory.

When the Java Application Server has to dereference the Reference object, it creates an instance of the SQLServerDataSourceObjectFactory object and calls the getObjectInstance method, passing in the Reference object, to retrieve the data source instance.