Next Generation Application Integration: From Simple Information to Web Services

Chapter Ten. Adapters and the J2EE Connector Architecture

There is no question about it: If you're going to do application integration, you're going to need adapters. That's the purpose of this chapter—to explain the notion, architecture, and implementation of adapters.

However, adapters don't stop there. There is a new standard on the rise, the J2EE Connector Architecture, which defines a standard architecture and adapter behavior. This standard gives us the ability to create an adapter once, and then use it anywhere—including most integration and application servers. Clearly this provides the application integration technology consumer with many advantages.

Adapters are powerful; they deal with the ugly details of the underlying application, ...