Adapters
Business information is distributed among different business applications (such as SAP R/3 or PeopleSoft) or available from databases or files. Adapters help make this information available to the business process by "adapting" the applications to a common messaging system.
What are Adapters?
Adapters translate information into the appropriate format:
Adapters receive information from a source application and publish it to the business process in a shared format. Adapters subscribe to information from a business process and translate it to a format the target application can understand. Adapters can also be set up to work in a client/server mode (using remote operations.)The illustration below shows how a Siebel customer service system communicates with the business process using an adapter publication service and the business process communicates with the PeopleSoft Order Management system using an adapter subscription service.
Figure 22: Adapter data flow
In ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks, adapters provide services to activities inside the business process.
Adapter Features
Companies in a wide range of industries have successfully used TIBCO adapters to integrate different packages and custom applications. ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks includes second-generation adapters that are based on the same technology but have the following new features:
Easy Configuration With Design-Time Adapter—All adapters included with ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks use a unified GUI that simplifies adapter configuration. A Design-Time Adapter allows you to directly access the source application from the TIBCO Designer GUI and specify the data the business process needs.
Easy Inclusion in Business Processes—The business process can communicate with adapters by using activities found in the adapter palette. These activities interact with each of the standard adapter services. For example, the Publish to Adapter activity sends a message to an adapter subscription service.
Easy Deployment and Monitoring—When you are ready to deploy your project, the TIBCO Designer deployment palette allows you to assign each adapter to its own machine. At run-time, the TIBCO Administrator GUI monitors each adapter in its own panel. You can therefore easily see if one of the adapters is a bottleneck in the business process flow.
ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks Adapters
A fully integrated ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks adapter can be installed into a TIBCO administration domain and later monitored and managed from the TIBCO Administrator GUI. ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks fully integrates with the following adapters:
Technology adapters—Includes adapters that access files or databases.
Application adapters—Includes adapter for PeopleSoft, SAP R/3, Siebel, and others.
Other TIBCO Adapters can be loaded into TIBCO Designer and configured using the Generic Adapter Configuration resources. These adapters can then be used in process design and run as part of the integration project. They cannot, however, be installed into the TIBCO administration domain or monitored and managed via TIBCO Administrator.
For more information, see Phase 3: Services Configuration.