An ODA is one of the possible components of an WebSphere Business Integration Adapter. An adapter includes run-time components to support communication between an integration broker and applications or technologies. One of these run-time components is the ODA, which creates the business object definitions for the connector to use at run time. The connector is the run-time component that handles communication between an application (or technology) and an integration broker. The adapter also includes an adapter framework, which includes components for the configuration, run time, and development of custom adapters in cases where a prebuilt adapter for a particular legacy or specialized application is not currently available as part of the WebSphere Business Integration Adapter product.
For development of an ODA, the adapter framework includes the development support listed in Table 20.
Table 20. Adapter framework support for the development of an ODA
In addition to the WebSphere Business Integration Adapter Framework, the Adapter Development Kit (ADK) is a toolkit that provides code samples of ODAs and connectors. For more information, see Adapter Development Kit.
The Adapter Development Kit (ADK) provides files and samples to assist in the development of an adapter. It provides samples for many of the adapter components, including an Object Discovery Agent (ODA), a connector, and a data handler. The ADK provides these samples in the DevelopmentKits subdirectory of the product directory.
Table 21 lists the samples that the ADK provides for the development of an ODA as well as the subdirectory of the DevelopmentKits directory in which they reside.
Table 21. ADK Samples for ODA Development
Adapter Development Kit component | Description | DevelopmentKits subdirectory |
---|---|---|
Object Discovery Agent Development Kit (ODK) | Provides ODA samples | Odk |
Twineball adapter sample | Provides a sample adapter, which includes an ODA | Twineball_sample |
As Table 21 shows, the Adapter Development Kit includes samples of Object Discovery Agents (ODAs). These samples reside in the following directory:
DevelopmentKits\Odk
For more information, see Development support for ODAs.
Table 22 shows the tools that the WebSphere Business Integration Adapters and WebSphere InterChange Server products provide to assist in the development of business object definitions.
Table 22. Tools for development of business object definitions
Development tool | Description |
---|---|
Business Object Designer | Graphical tool that assists in the creation of business object definitions, either manually or through an ODA. |
For a brief introduction to business object definitions, see Business object definitions.
Table 23 shows the tools that the WebSphere Business Integration Adapters and WebSphere InterChange Server products provide to assist in the development of an ODA.
Table 23. Tools for development of ODAs
Development tool | Description |
---|---|
Business Object Designer | Graphical tool that assists in the creation of business object definitions, either manually or through an ODA. |
Object Discovery Agent Development Kit (ODK) |
Contains:
|
As Table 23 shows, the ODK provides for the ODA developer both the ODK API (which is the library of methods to use in the ODA) and sample ODAs, which reside in the following product subdirectory:
DevelopmentKits\Odk\Samples
The ODK includes the following sample ODAs
ODA sample | Description | Subdirectory of DevelopmentKits\Odk |
---|---|---|
Roman Army ODA | Converts the names of Roman generals and soldiers from an XML file to business object definitions and provides some binary files that describe the conversion. This ODA uses the ODK API, as described in this chapter. |
For startup scripts: Samples For external files and .jar file: RomanArmy For Java source: com\ibm\btools\ODK2\RomanArmy |
JDBC ODA |
Converts JDBC data (tables and schemas) to business object definitions. For this sample ODA to run, it must have access to a JDBC database. This sample is based on a previous version of the ODK API, which handles generation of business object definitions only, not generation of file content.
|
For startup scripts: Samples For Java source: com\crossworlds\JDBC |
For a brief introduction to ODAs, see Using an Object Discovery Agent to create a business object definition. For instructions on how to run the sample Roman Army ODA, see Using the sample ODA.