This post is about adapters delivered by BizTalk. Through adapters of this toolset of Microsoft heterogeneous connectivity can be achieved. In a previous post I mentioned the adapters delivered by Host Integration Server 2006, the article about it will be published in June edition of the Dutch .NET Magazine. These adapters can be found here. Adapters for Oracle, SAP, Siebel can be found here as a download, so one can install them and can connect to these systems. Using the adapters in a solution one is preparing the first step is usually configuring connection for instance to DB2 (see picture).
Followed by this step can be security, ecetera. Important with working with connecting to other systems like DB2 or Oracle, is permissions. One needs to have the proper permission to connect to the system, but also to for instance query views or tables in a DB2 or Oracle database. Having the proper permission can be checked when going though the adapter wizard (see figure below).
More about adapters like developing a custom adapter, walkthroughs can be found here. Having the possibility to expose data through adapters creates more ability to let it be availiable anywhere in the world through use of services. Services by themself can be composed to support a business process. Composition of services can be consumed by smartphones, portals, applications and so on (see picture below).
Adapters can eventually help to make integration between applications possible, but also is/can be a cornerstone in creating an SOA (see this dutch article or an english one here).
