The webMethods Adapter Development Kit (ADK)
provides the information needed to build webMethods integrations to
applications. The ADK includes a user's guide and a sample adapter that
implements the ADK's metadata constructs and
references the Javadoc provided with the Development
Kit.
In addition to the webMethods Integration
Server, the webMethods Developer is required for creating and administering
adapters. The webMethods Developer includes an Adapter Service Editor and an
Adapter Notifications Editor for creating and managing adapter services and
notifications, respectively.
The Adapter Development Kit now enables you
to create adapter polling notifications that can be deployed in a webMethods
Integration Server 6.5 cluster. When Integration Servers are deployed in a
cluster, the individual servers in the cluster will now automatically share
information about the polling notifications in the cluster, and the adapter runtime
will automatically coordinate the polling among instances of the same polling
notification node on different servers in the cluster.
Adapter services now provide a new parameter
called $connectionName that enables you to
dynamically override the connection associated with an adapter service at runtime.
In previous releases, you could permanently change the connection associated
with a service, but you could not programmatically update a connection within a
flow service. This capability may be defined for each adapter built using the
ADK 6.5. However, for all adapters built using earlier versions of the ADK,
this feature is enabled by default.
There are times when you must stop the
activities of a polling notification or a listener, such as when you need to
perform system maintenance or during deployment. Prior to this release, the
only way to stop the activities of a polling notification or a listener was to
disable it. In some adapter implementations, this can result in a loss of data.
With this release, you can now suspend polling notifications and listeners
without the potential loss of data. For example, you can now suspend JDBC
Adapter polling notifications and still maintain event data within a
notification’s buffer table until you re-enable the notification.
This release of the Adapter Development Kit
enables you to define partitions for connection pools. These partitions are
logical divisions within a given connection pool, enabling connection objects
in different partitions to be used in different ways, as defined by the
adapter.
Adapter connections define the general set
of connection parameters to a given back-end resource. However, it is sometimes
necessary for an adapter to connect to the back-end resource using attributes
that are specific to a particular operation or data set. For example, a
particular back-end may require that a connection be established with a
specific set of user credentials in order to update a given record. If the
number of unique attributes is small, it may be possible to define a connection
pool with each set of attributes and select the appropriate pool at runtime
based on the service being called and/or the data being manipulated. But
sometimes this option is not practical, which is why the ADK now provides a way
to partition the connection pools.
This version of the Adapter Development Kit
now allows adapter services to have variables in their input and output
signatures that are either wrapped in a containing record, as all input and
output variables are in previous releases of the Integration Server, or
unwrapped and exposed directly on the adapter service's input and output
records.
Additionally, this release also allows a
reference to the entire input pipeline to be passed directly to an adapter
services and/or a synchronous notification.
These enhancements are provided to simplify
support for adapter services and synchronous notifications that were created in
earlier versions of the Integration Server, when all adapter service and
synchronous notification input and output signatures were wrapped.
The WmManagedConnectionFactory
base class now defines a set of callback methods that you can override in any
connection factory implementation class. These callbacks are called during
state changes on the connection node.
You can now see a list of updates applied to
your 6.x adapters on the About page for each adapter
in the Integration Server Administrator 6.5.
The WmART package
now contains additional public services that enable you to programmatically
locate and list adapter components such as connections, listeners, services,
and notifications. You can use these new services for creating more robust
adapter integrations. For more information about these services, see the webMethods
Integration Server Built-In Services Reference.
This release of the ADK adds support for the
features included in the 6.1 version of the adapter runtime:
New services allow users to change the
connection associated with an adapter service instead of having to create new
connections for each service (or notification).
Users can see the status of an
adapter’s connection pool at any given time (how many connections are
currently available) to help monitor and tune an adapter.
Users can configure a setting for connection
pools to retry starting a connection if an error has occurred. Previously, they
had to restart the adapter. If a back end resource is not available or the
Integration Server is not started when the adapter is started, the connection
will retry the number of times and at the interval the user sets.
Full documentation is provided to enable
proper invocation of available public adapter services.
Minor updates have been made to
documentation, new Java docs have been added, and the Installer is updated for
this release. The Adapter Development Kit 6.1 supports all IS-supported
platforms except AS/400 and Mac OSX. It requires Integration Server 6.1 and
Developer 6.1.
The 6.0.1 version of the Adapter Development
Kit documents the listener notification support provided by the WmART package in Integration Server 6.0.1 Service Pack 2
(SP2). ADK v6.0.1 also replaces the prior two tutorial adapters with a sample
back end program and sample adapter that implements both polling and listener
notification mechanisms. The v6.0.1 ADK Javadocs have
been revised and this version documents a new, simpler means for adapter
developers to use for registering their adapters.
Integration Server SP2 and Developer SP1,
which provide support for listener notifications in its GUI editors, are
required for using ADK 6.0.1. Adapters developed using ADK 6.0.1 require these service pack levels if listener notifications
are being implemented.
The Adapter Development Kit User's Guide
Version 6.0 provides general information about building adapters, including an
explanation of the metadata model, and references the tutorial adapters. The ADK's Javadoc reference documentation
provides detailed descriptions of the APIs available in the webMethods
Integration Server for building adapters.
The ADK includes a Tutorial Adapter that
implements simple, often-used metadata constructs. The ADK also provides a
Tutorial2 Adapter that implements more complex metadata constructs.
The webMethods ADK 6.0 provides support for
polling type notifications. These notifications can be used to support
"exactly-once" notification to ensure that duplicate documents are
not forwarded even under fault/failure situations. Note that the webMethods
JDBC Adapter 6.x implements polling notifications in this manner.
The webMethods Integration Server provides
GUIs for configuring adapter connections and handling connection pools. Tools
are provided in the webMethods Developer for editing adapter services and
notifications.
For a list of all the changes and issues
resolved since the last release, see the readme.txt file for webMethods Adapter
Development Kit on the webMethods software download site or in the directories
in which you installed webMethods Adapter Development Kit.
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