The Integration Repository is a wrapper around an Oracle ATG Web Commerce SQL repository, which is referred to as the local repository. In a system architecture that uses an Integration Repository, the integrated data resides in the remote system, rather than just in a local database, and queries are made using the RPC command structure described in the Remote Procedure Calls chapter.

Just like other repositories, an Integration Repository defines one or more item descriptors. Each item descriptor defines one or more commands to be used for the operations that need to interact with the remote system:

These operations are described in more detail in the Command Operations section of this chapter. Each command involves an RPC call that may access the remote system, as described in the Remote Procedure Calls chapter.

The Integration Repository enables you to use the Oracle ATG Web Commerce Repository Query Language (RQL) and all the RQL droplets to access data that is stored on remote systems. The translation between RQL and the query format required by the remote system is handled by an implementation of the IntegrationRepositoryView class. An implementation of IntegrationRepositoryView typically needs to be written for each remote system you want to integrate with Oracle ATG Web Commerce.

Wrapping the SQL repository provides the Integration Repository with superior performance and robustness by leveraging the SQL repository’s sophisticated item caching features. You can persist data from the remote system locally in a SQL repository. By maintaining locally-cached copies of the remote data, the Integration Repository can make the data available more quickly than if you needed to access the remote system every time you needed to access the data. In addition, the local SQL repository offers a degree of protection against the remote system being temporarily unavailable.

More details of the Integration Repository architecture are described in the Integration Repository APIs section of this chapter.