Runtime - Integration Server - Adapter Engine & Adapter Framework

1. From the XI architecture, we can see Adapter Engine is a part of Integration Sever, and Adapter Engine comprises of Adapter Framework and Resource Adapters. Usually we say AE is based on AF.

NOTE:

    a) Adapter Framework supports JCA (J2EE Connector Architecture) but is not based on it. In my opinion, Adapter Framework is an AOP(Aspect Oriented Programming) product like Microsoft .NET Enterprise Library which can provide lots of common functionalities like logging, security, cache, exception handling etc.

    b) JCA is standard architecture for connecting the J2EE platform to EIS (Enterprise Infomation Systems) like DBMS, ERP etc. The resource adapters locate at Adapter Engine are software components based on JCA.

2. The steps a message interchanges from one EIS to another are:

    EIS -> Adapter Engine (Specific Adapter -> [SOAP-XML] -> Module Processor -> messaging/queue) -> [SOAP-XML/HTTP] -> Integration Server (Pipeline Services - Receiver Identification-> Interface Identification -> Message Split -> Message Mapping -> Technical Routing -> Call Adapter) -> another EIS system.

3. Adapter Engine runs on J2EE platform but Integration Engine works on ABAP stack. In this case they share infomation via XI message not JRFC.

4. Adapters