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Differences between WebSphere Adapters and WebSphere Business Integration Adapters

Both WebSphere Adapters and WebSphere Business Integration Adapters mediate communication between components and enterprise information systems. The two types of adapter differ in several respects including: their integration, their JCA-compliance, their data models, and the management of their connectivity.

There are several differences between WebSphere Adapters and WebSphere Business Integration Adapters. These distinctions are most important during development of applications. When deploying applications to a running server, the nature of the adapters used affects some of the steps that need to be followed.

Adapters provide communication mechanisms between enterprise information systems (EISs) and Integration Designer applications. To illustrate the operation of the adapters, Figure 1 and Figure 2 provide details of the communication between the server and the EIS for the two types of adapters.

Figure 1. Detailed schematic of a WebSphere Adapter

Figure 1 depicts a WebSphere Adapter managing the connectivity between a Java EE component supported by the server and the EIS. The WebSphere Adapter resides inside the server.

Figure 2. Detailed schematic of a WebSphere Business Integration Adapter.

Figure 2 shows a WebSphere Business Integration Adapter mediating communication between the WebSphere Integration Broker and the EIS. The integration broker communicates with the WebSphere Business Integration Adapter through the use of a Java™ Message Service (JMS) transport layer.

Table 1.shows the differences between the two types of adapter.

Differences between WebSphere Adapters and WebSphere Business Integration Adapters
Feature WebSphere Adapters WebSphere Business Integration Adapters
JCA Compliance Fully JCA compliant (version 1.5). Not JCA-compliant.
Connectivity Manager Rely on standard JCA contracts to manage lifecycle tasks such as starting and stopping. Rely on WebSphere Adapter Framework to manage connectivity.
Event Notification Use an EventStore subclass to retrieve events from an EIS. Manage event notification using a pollFor Events method.
Request Processing Clients directly invoke one of several interaction contracts to query or modify data in the EIS. Rely on an integration server and the WebSphere Adapter Framework to initiate and help process requests.
Data Models Use an Enterprise Metadata Discovery (EMD) utility to parse an EIS and develop Service Data Objects (SDOs) and other useful artifacts. The EMD is part of the WebSphere Adapter implementation. Use a separate Object Discovery Agent (ODA) to introspect an EIS and generate business object definition schemas.
Integration Run on the server. Reside outside the server. The server or integration broker communicates with the adapter via a Java Message Service (JMS) transport layer.
WebSphere Adapters are the recommended product.

Work with adapters