WebSphere Business Integration Adapters provides configurable, modular elements that enable connectivity between enterprise applications. These modular elements, which include connectors and business objects, work together to form business process interfaces used to send data from one application to another.
A critical aspect of implementing a business integration system is to identify and develop the business process interfaces that are needed. A typical implementation will use multiple business process interfaces.
Each interface addresses a specific business task that needs to be integrated. For a simplified example, assume that an enterprise uses Application A as its system of record, but uses Application B for billing. The business problem is to integrate data exchanges for several types of business information between the two applications. One crucial type of business information is customer data--the customer's name, address, and other details need to be synchronized between the two applications so that when data changes in one, it also changes in the other.
To accomplish this requires two interfaces:
The enterprise might also need to track and record the items for which the customer is billed. This requires additional interfaces:
Each interface can be distinguished from others in terms of its source application in combination with the type of business data being exchanged. Each interface also has its own event-notification mechanism, trigger, and business object that initiate flows out of the source application.