An IBM WebSphere Adapter runs on WebSphere Process Server
and implements the Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) Connector Architecture
(JCA), version 1.5. WebSphere Business Integration Adapters are
not JCA-compliant and run outside of the application server.
Figure 1. WebSphere Adapter
Fully JCA compliant, WebSphere Adapters run on WebSphere Process
Server as shown in Figure 1. WebSphere Adapters, also known as resource
adapters or JCA adapters, implement contracts that manage interactions
between Enterprise Information Systems (EISs) and J2EE components
running on application servers.
Figure 2. WebSphere Business Integration Adapter
As shown in Figure 2, WebSphere Business Integration Adapters
are distributed. They reside outside of the application server.
The server, or integration broker, communicates with this type of
adapter via a Java Messaging Service (JMS) transport layer.
Other differences between WebSphere Adapters and WebSphere Business
Integration Adapters include the following:
- Connectivty
management WebSphere Adapters rely on standard JCA contracts
to manage life-cycle tasks such as stopping, starting; WebSphere
Business Integration Adapters rely on the WebSphere Adapter Framework
to manage connectivity.
- Event notification WebSphere Adapters use an EventStore
subclass to retrieve events from an EIS; WebSphere Business Integration
Adapters manage event notification using a pollFor Events method.
- Request processing WebSphere Adapter clients directly
invoke one of several interaction contracts to query or modify data
in the EIS; WebSphere Business Integration Adapters rely on an integration
server and the Adapter Framework to initiate and help process requests.
- Data models WebSphere Adapters 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. WebSphere Business Integration
Adapters use a separate Object Discovery Agent (ODA) to introspect
an EIS and generate business object definition schemas.