Understanding the Development Kit Adapters

The BEA WebLogic Integration Adapter Development Kit (ADK) provides sample adapters to get you started developing your own adapters: a DBMS adapter and a sample adapter. If you are developing your own adapters using the ADK, we recommend that you begin by studying the adapters supplied with the kit. Although these adapters are generic and simple, they serve as excellent examples of the types of adapters you can build using the ADK.

 

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How the Kit Adapters Were Developed

All the development kit adapters were developed using the ADK. Although the ADK makes it possible to develop sophisticated adapters, the adapters provided in the kit have been kept simple deliberately, to make them easy to dissect and understand.

 

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How to Use the Kit Adapters

If you are an adapter provider or developer, we recommend that you study the kit adapters to increase your knowledge of the ADK and to determine how you can use the adapters as models for your own. All kit adapters are based on version 1.3 of the J2EE (Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition) from Sun Microsystems. For details about the ADK, see Developing Adapters. The following sections provide details about the kit adapters.

DBMS Adapter

WebLogic Integration provides a DBMS adapter that integrates WebLogic Server with a simple relational database that it uses as its EIS. The DBMS adapter serves as a good example for adapter developers and providers who want to understand the adapter and ADK without having to learn an unfamiliar proprietary database system.

If you do not have a suitable database to use with the DBMS adapter, you can use the PointBase database included with WebLogic Integration.

The DBMS adapter supports the following functions:

• Retrieving all database records

• Retrieving sets of database records

• Writing database records

• Receiving notifications when a record is updated, inserted, or deleted from a table

For more information, see Learning to Develop Adapters Using the DBMS Sample Adapter in Developing Adapters.

Sample Adapter

The sample adapter is provided as a template for new adapters. It includes a design-time component, a service adapter, and an event adapter. The source code clearly documents the structure of the service adapter and the event adapter.

The sample adapter is accompanied by a simple EIS implementation that demonstrates how related events can be triggered by invoking services. Each component contains comments indicating where you must supply your own adapter-specific logic.