Tibco Adapter Home

What are Adapters?

Adapters are connectors to data sources to catchevent changes. Once an Adapter catches a event change, it publishes the messageto a message box using either EMS or RVD
Adapter is a gateway between different applications using messaging channels.

What are the different types of adapters?

Technical Adapters (File Adapter, DB Adapter)
Functional Adapters (PeopleSoft Adapter, SAP R3 Adapter)
Custom Adapters

Adapter Components

Each adapter has two main components, an adapterpalette and a run-time adapter. In addition, some adapters include adesign-time adapter. The adapter palette and design-time adapter are usedduring configuration, and the run-time adapter is used at production time.

Adapter Palette:

Each adapter includes a palette that is used forconfiguration. The palette is automatically loaded into TIBCO Designer duringadapter installation and available the next time Designer is started. Thepalette enables you to configure adapter specific options, such as itsconnection to the vendor application, logging options, and adapter services.During the design phase, the palette connects to the vendor application andfetches information about connection options and data schemas. You can thengraphically select the appropriate items. For example, during configuration ofa TIBCO Adapter for ActiveDatabase adapter instance, the palette fetches allpertinent tables in the database. You then choose the tables that theparticular service is to send or receive.

Run-time Adapter :

Once the adapter has been configured using TIBCODesigner, it can be deployed. A deployed adapter instance is referred to as arun-time adapter. A run-time adapter operates in a production environment,handling communication between a vendor application and other applications thatare configured for the TIBCO environment.

Design-time Adapter :

Some adapters use a design-time adapter (DTA) toaccess a vendor application and return design-time configuration information.The palette is a client of the DTA process. The DTA connects to the vendorapplication, fetches data schemas and sends them to the palette.

What is Adapter Lifecycle ?

The following is an overview of the adapterlifecycle:
1. Install the vendor application to which the adapter connects beforeinstalling the adapter. For many adapters, the adapter and vendor applicationneed not be installed on the same machine.
2. Adapters depend on other software from TIBCO. Before installing an adapter,the TIBCO Runtime Agent™ software must be installed on each computer on whichthe adapter runs.
3. Create an adapter instance and save it in a project using TIBCO Designer™. Aproject contains configuration information required for a run-time adapter tointeract with the vendor application and other applications.
4. Deploy the adapter. An adapter instance is deployed using TIBCOAdministrator.
a) Using TIBCO Designer, create an Enterprise Archive (EAR) file, whichcontains information about the adapter instances and processes you wish todeploy.
b) Using TIBCO Administrator, upload the EAR, then deploy the adapter on themachine(s) of your choice. You can set runtime options before deployment.
c) Using TIBCO Administrator, start and stop the adapter.
d) Monitor the adapter using the built-in monitoring tools provided by TIBCOAdministrator.

Adapter Services

Adapters are responsible for making informationfrom different applications available to other applications across anenterprise. To do so, an adapter is configured to provide one or more of thefollowing services:
Publication Service
Subscription Service
Request-Response Service
Request-Response Invocation Service

Publication Service :

An adapter publication service recognizes whenbusiness events happen in a vendor application, and asynchronously sends outthe event data in realtime to interested systems in the TIBCO environment. Forexample, an adapter can publish an event each time a new customer account isadded to an application. Other applications that receive the event can thenupdate their records just as the original application did. When an applicationreceives a request to create a customer record, the application notifies theadapter about the request and the adapter publishes the event.
User Interface-----------------Application X--------------Adapter-------------- TIBCO Messaging
Create record Send to adapter Publishing

Polls on the source data table (base table).
Reads data from the source table.
Sends the data to the message bus.

Subscription Service:

An adapter subscription service asynchronouslyperforms an action such as updating business objects or invoking native APIs ona vendor application. The adapter service listens to external business events,which trigger the appropriate action. Referring to the previous example, anadapter subscription service can listen for customer record creation events(happening in an application and published to the TIBCO infrastructure) andupdate another application.
TIBCO Messaging------------Adapter-----------Application Y Subscribing Updaterecord

Reads data from the message bus.
Gives the data to the destination table.

Request-Response Service:

In addition to asynchronously publishing andsubscribing to events, an adapter can be used for synchronously retrieving datafrom or executing transactions within a vendor application. After the action isperformed in the vendor application, the adapter service sends a response backto the requester with either the results of the action or a confirmation thatthe action occurred. This entire process is called request-response, and it isuseful for actions such as adding or deleting business objects.

Receives requests from other applications.
Parses the requests.
Returns response (Sends only the requested data to the message bus).

Request-Respons Invocation Service:

An adapter request-response invocation service issimilar to the request-response service, except that the roles are reversed.The vendor application is now the requester or initiator of the service,instead of the provider of the service. The adapter service acts as a proxy, givingthe vendor application the ability to invoke synchronously functionality on anexternal system.