WebSphere Adapter

A WebSphere Adapter (or JCA Adapter, or J2C Adapter) is a system-level software driver that a Java application uses to connect to an enterprise information system (EIS). WebSphere Adapters conform to version 1.5 of the JCA specification.

A WebSphere Adapter plugs into an application server and provides connectivity between the EIS, the application server, and the enterprise application.

An application server vendor extends its system once to support the J2EE Connector Architecture (JCA) and is then assured of seamless connectivity to multiple EISs. Likewise, an EIS vendor provides one standard WebSphere Adapter with the capability to plug into any application server that supports the connector architecture.

WebSphere Process Server provides the WebSphere Relational Resource Adapter (RRA) implementation. This WebSphere Adapter provides data access through JDBC calls to access the database dynamically. The connection management is based on the JCA connection management architecture. It provides connection pooling, transaction, and security support. WebSphere Process Server version 6.0 supports JCA version 1.5.

Data access for container-managed persistence (CMP) beans is managed by the WebSphere Persistence Manager indirectly. The JCA specification supports persistence manager delegation of the data access to the WebSphere Adapter without specific knowledge of the back-end store. For the relational database access, the persistence manager uses the relational resource adapter to access the data from the database. You can find the supported database platforms for the JDBC API at the WebSphere Process Server prerequisite Web site.

IBM supplies resource adapters for many enterprise systems separately from the WebSphere Process Server package, including (but not limited to): the Customer Information Control System (CICS), Host On-Demand (HOD), Information Management System (IMS), and Systems, Applications, and Products (SAP) R/3.

In WebSphere Process Server, EIS Imports and EIS Exports are used to interface with WebSphere Adapters. As an alternative, applications with WebSphere Adapters can be written by developing EJB session beans or services with tools such as Rational Application Developer. The session bean uses the javax.resource.cci interfaces to communicate with an enterprise information system through the WebSphere Adapter.


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Last updated: Tue Feb 21 17:21:48 2006

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