WebSphere Adapters and WebSphere Business Integration Adapters

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:

Parent topic: Product overview