IBM WebSphere Adapters

An IBM WebSphere Adapter implements the Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) Connector architecture (JCA), version 1.5. Also known as resource adapters or JCA adapters, WebSphere Adapters enable managed, bidirectional connectivity between enterprise information systems (EISs) and J2EE components supported by WebSphere Process Server.

A WebSphere Adapter

This graphic is described in surrounding text.

The IBM(R) WebSphere (R) Adapter portfolio is a new generation of adapters based on the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) standard. JCA is a standard architecture for integrating J2EE applications with enterprise information systems. Each of these systems provides native APIs for identifying a function to call, specifying its input data, and processing its output data. The goal of the JCA is to provide an independent API for coding these functions, to facilitate data sharing, and to integrate J2EE applications with existing and other EISs. The JCA standard accomplishes this by defining a series of contracts that govern interactions between an EIS and J2EE components within an application server.

Fully compliant with the JCA standard, WebSphere Adapters have been developed to run on WebSphere Process Server. A WebSphere Adapter does the following:
Each WebSphere Adapter is made up of the following: WebSphere Adapters use service data objects (SDO) for representing data objects.

WebSphere Adapters and WebSphere Business Integration Adapters

Unlike WebSphere Adapters, WebSphere Business Integration Adapters are not JCA-compliant.

A WebSphere Business Integration Adapter

This graphic is described in surrounding text.

As shown in the figure, WebSphere Business Integration Adapters are distributed. They reside outside of the application server. The server, or integration broker, communicates with this type of adapter through a Java Messaging Service (JMS) transport layer.

Other differences between WebSphere Adapters and WebSphere Business Integration Adapters include the following:

Terms of use |

Last updated: Thu Mar 23 13:24:30 2006

(c) Copyright IBM Corporation 2005.
This information center is powered by Eclipse technology (http://www.eclipse.org)