Glossary

A

adapter
A set of software modules that communicate with an integration broker and with applications or technologies to perform tasks such as executing application logic and exchanging data. An IBM WebSphere Business Integration Adapter always consists of the adapter framework and a connector specific to an application or technology. An adapter might also contain a sample business object specific to the application or technology, an Object Discovery Agent (ODA) designed to generate business object definitions specific to the application or technology, or both.

adapter development kit (ADK)
A development environment for creating custom adapters.

adapter framework
The software that IBM provides to install, configure, and run an adapter.

application connector
A connector that is designed to interact with a specific application. Application-specific connectors are intermediaries between an integration broker and applications. These connectors convert application-specific data into business objects that can be manipulated by components of the integration broker, and convert business objects from the components into data that can be received by the specific application.

application-specific component
The component of a connector that contains code tailored to a particular application or technology. This component initializes a business object handler to respond to requests, and, if needed, implements an event-notification mechanism to detect and respond to events that an application or external programmatic entity initiates. The code for this component is written in C++ or Java, depending on the language of the API provided by the application or technology.

B

business integration system
A system, consisting of an integration broker and a set of integration adapters, which allows heterogeneous business applications to exchange data through the coordinated transfer of information in the form of business objects.

business object
A set of attributes that represent a business entity (such as an Employee), an action on the data (such as a create or update operation), and instructions for processing the data. Components of the business integration system use business objects to exchange information and trigger actions.

C

character conversion
Encoding applied to a character so that it retains its meaning when it is transferred from a location that uses one character code set to a location that uses a different code set. See also character encoding.

character encoding
The mapping from a character (a letter of the alphabet) to a numeric value in a character code set. For example, the ASCII character code set encodes the letter "A" as 65, while the EBCIDIC character set encodes this letter as 43. The character code set contains encodings for all characters in one or more language alphabets.

connector
A set of software modules (the connector framework and a connector's application-specific component) that uses business objects to send information about an event to an integration broker or to receive information about a request from the integration broker. See also application connector and technology connector.

connector framework
The component of a connector that manages interactions between a connector's application-specific component and the integration broker. This component provides all required management services, and retrieves the meta-data that the connector requires from the repository. The connector framework, whose code is common to all connectors, is written in Java and includes a C++ extension to allow the development of application-specific components written in C++.

I

integration broker
A program that integrates data among heterogeneous applications. An integration broker typically provides a variety of services that include: the ability to route data, a repository of rules that govern the integration process, connectivity to a variety of applications, and administrative capabilities that facilitate integration.

L

local repository
A collection of meta-data that describes components of the business integration system such as business objects whose data is transferred across applications. It also contains the configuration information associated with the connector framework and a connector's application-specific component. It is also referred to as the connector's local repository.

locale
The part of a user's environment that brings together information about how to handle data that is specific to the end user's particular country, language, or territory. The locale is typically specified when configuring the operating system or internationalized software products.

O

object discovery agent (ODA)
A tool designed to "discover" business object requirements specific to a data source and to generate business object definitions from those requirements. Business Object Designer presents a forms-based interface to available ODAs, and helps manage the discovery and definition generation processes.

object discovery agent development kit (ODK)
An API for creating object discovery agents (ODAs).

T

technology connector
A connector that is designed for interactions that conform to a specific technology. The WebSphere Business Integration Adapter for XML, for example, can be an intermediary through which an integration broker sends data to a web server (or other programmatic entity) using the XML format, even if that web server resides on a network that is not running a WebSphere business integration system.

Copyright IBM Corp. 2002, 2003

Copyright IBM Corp. 1997, 2003