<grumble>why doesn't Glassfish complain if it can't find the object factory you have defined when setting up the custom resource instead of just returning javax.naming.Reference object back from the lookup?</grumble>
This is JDK's behavior. When you bind a Reference with factory class name and for some reason factory class cannot be instantiated or used by JDK's naming manager, Naming Manager will simply return the Reference itself. You can refer javax.naming.spi.NamingManager
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