The adapter for Microsoft Exchange Server is metadata-driven. In the WebSphere business integration system, metadata is defined as application-specific information that describes the data structures exported by the supported applications, in this case, Exchange Server. The metadata is used to construct business object definitions that the connector uses at run time to build business objects.
A metadata-driven adapter handles each business object that it supports according to the metadata encoded in the business object definition. This enables the adapter to handle new or modified business object definitions without requiring modifications to the underlying connector code.
The application-specific metadata described in the business object definition includes information about the structure of the business object and the settings of its attribute properties. At run time, instantiated business objects carry the actual data values.
The adapter makes assumptions about the structure of its supported business objects, the relationships between parent and child business objects, and the format of the data. Therefore it is important that the structure of the business object exactly match the structure defined for the corresponding Item within Exchange Server or the adapter will not be able to process business objects correctly.