Adapter Development
Adapters link applications in one computing environment with information or logic in another computing environment. Adapters typically consist of run-time components that reside on each end of the communication pipe between the platforms being integrated. An application that invokes an adapter to get access to the required resources is often called the “source,” while the “target” is the remote data store or application logic the application accesses. Adapters use an Application Programming Interface (API) that shields the application (and its developer) from the complexities involved in accessing data or resources. Integration products often use adapters to connect to packaged or custom applications.

The terms adapter and connector are totally interchangeable. The conceptual role of a connector or an adapter is to provide an abstraction of the particulars of the application. It must hide the complexity of the application and hide most changes in the application due to version changes or parameter changes, which may not affect the other platforms or even the interface itself.

Adapters provide the following benefits:

• Provides a reusable set of software services that can extract and publish information to source and/or target systems, which would save the effort of having to build individual interfaces each time we do an application integration project
• Provides an effective way to deal with the proprietary details of the underlying applications, varied databases and standards based interfaces, thereby alleviating the developer to worry about such semantics