If an application integration must interact with an application for which Software AG provides an adapter, you can create services that invoke services in the adapter. Adapters are software components with browser-based interfaces that connect resources in your enterprise to Software AG products, and, through those products, to each other. While Integration Server supports a variety of standards such as XML, adapters support proprietary protocols for accessing packaged applications such as SAP, Siebel, Oracle Applications, and PeopleSoft; databases such as Oracle, SQL Server, Informix, Sybase, and DB2; and mission-critical programs on mainframes and UNIX systems. Adapters transform data from resource-specific format into the format used by the Software AG product, and vice versa. They enable you to incorporate resources into application integrations without having to build complex custom code. Adapters run on Integration Server.

Adapters convey data from resources to Software AG products. Adapters can either actively poll resources for new or changed data or passively receive new or changed data from resources. For example, the Adapter for JDBC can receive data from a database, transform it from the database-specific format into the appropriate Software AG internal format, and send the transformed data to services on Integration Server for further processing.

Adapters convey data from Software AG products to resources. For example, an Adapter for JDBC service can receive data from an Integration Server service, transform it from the Software AG internal format into the format required by the database, and insert it into the database.