BizTalk 2006 Adapters - Making Interoperability a Reality

Adapters are the fundamental building blocks Microsoft BizTalk 2006 uses to communicate between different applications – they send and receive messages to and from the BizTalk server to particular applications.

An adapter, whether it sends or receives a message, has to know how to communicate in a way the other application will understand it. Likewise, when an adapter receives a message, it must know what it is – a crucial task for the orchestration process to take place.

Depending on the application BizTalk 2006 has to communicate with determines what type of adapter a developer chooses – BizTalk Server 2006 comes with several adapters, or adapters come from third party sources or are custom made.

Microsoft BizTalk Server introduces new way of creating adapters

Instead of an adapter framework like previous BizTalk server versions, the newest version builds adapters as WCF channels…ones shipped with BizTalk 2006 are compatible with SOAP and SOAP with WS-* technologies.

IT developers can easily create an adapter by using an existing WCF channel or create an entire new one for a specific purpose.

Microsoft also provides an adapter pack that includes WCF-based adapters for different line-of-business (LOB) applications like SAP, Siebel and Oracle databases – created by the WCF LOB Adapter SDK, this generic framework is used to create adapters for LOB applications. In fact, this type of adapter can be used with any .NET Framework application, even without BizTalk Server 2006.

The MSMQ is another adapter Microsoft develops for the BizTalk server – it allows the sending and receiving of messages using Microsoft Messaging Queuing while the WebSphere MQ Adapter provides the same for IBM’s WebSphere Message Queuing.

Interaction among file storage mechanisms is made possible with the File Adapter, which specifically provides the ability to read from and write to files in the Windows file system. A lot of the time, business process applications can access the same file system which makes exchanging messages through files an easy option. Other adapters in this category are also available for Sharepoint, IBM and Oracle databases.

The other important category of adapters are those that allow connection to commonly used business applications – BizTalk 2006 produces adapters for such programs as PeopleSoft, SAP R/3, Siebel e-business application, JDEdwards One World and others.

Bookmark and check back soon with the ITstaffing-e knowledge center for further information on all the components of the Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 that work together to maximize efficiency in an organization.