Wcf lob adapter sdk

The services her application needs (step 2). The WCF LOB Adapter SDK provides two different tools for doing this. For .NET applications, the adapter consumer uses the Add Adapter Service Reference Visual Studio Plug-In. For BizTalk applications, the adapter consumer uses the quite similar Consume Adapter Service BizTalk Project Add-In (which works only with BizTalk Server 2006 R2). In either case, the adapter accesses the LOB application metadata to provide a current view of the services this application offers.Once the adapter consumer has chosen the services her application will need, the LOB adapter creates a WSDL interface that exposes these services (step 3). In the example shown here, for instance, the red circles represent the functions of the LOB application that this adapter consumer has asked the adapter to make available. As shown in Figure 11, the adapter consumer can now create a WCF client application using these services (step 4).
Figure  SEQ Figure \* ARABIC 11: The adapter exposes the selected LOB application services as ordinary WCF servicesTo the WCF client, the LOB application looks like any other WCF service—it’s just an interface with operations—and so its services can be invoked in the usual way. The adapter maps the native functions and data types of the LOB application into standard WCF-accessible operations. When the WCF client executes, it invokes these services as required (step 5). To communicate with the LOB application, the adapter uses whatever communication mechanism this application needs, typically via a client library provided by the application. (As the figure suggests, an LOB adapter acts as a WCF transport channel, converting between WCF messages and LOB application-specific messages.) To make this communication more efficient, the Adapter SDK Runtime can pool and reuse open connections to the application.Every adapter created using the WCF LOB Adapter Framework SDK is implemented as a WCF channel, and so each one is identified with a binding. For example, Microsoft is scheduled to ship a BizTalk Adapter Pack in early 2008 containing adapters created using this approach for SAP, Siebel, and the Oracle database. To use the SAP adapter, a WCF client specifies SapBinding, while the other adapters are specified using SiebelBinding and OracleDBBinding, respectively. Note that any WCF application can use adapters built in this way. Rather than requiring a specialized integration product such as BizTalk Server, adapters now fit into the standard communication model provided by WCF.BizTalk Server certainly can use

AbstractThe WCF LOB Adapter SDK (ASDK) is a set of runtime components and design-time UI tools providing a consistent framework for the development, management, and runtime execution of adapters for line-of-business (LOB) systems. (Systems such as SAP, Siebel, relational database management systems, and others are collectively known as the LOB applications.) Although the old COM-based framework for BizTalk adapter development is still available and fully supported by Microsoft, adapters built with the WCF LOB Adapter SDK offer significant advantage over adapters built on the old framework because they can be consumed not only from BizTalk but also from any .NET WCF-enabled application using familiar WCF semantics. As a complete development framework, the WCF LOB Adapter SDK offers tools to facilitate the development process for both adapter developers and adapter consumers. Preview Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF. Rights and permissionsCopyright information© 2009 George Dunphy, Sergei Moukhnitski, Stephen Kaufman, Peter Kelcey, Harold Campos, David PetersonAbout this chapterPublish with us

SDK provides tools for developers in both roles.But what value does an adapter provide? Answering this question requires understanding how LOB applications expose their services. A typical LOB application offers lots of functionality, and so it provides a large number of services. For example, SAP exposes many thousands of remote function calls (RFCs), while a database might contain any number of stored procedures implementing business logic. Alongside these services, LOB applications typically provide metadata that describes the services. A database, for example, might provide a mechanism for learning about the stored procedures it contains, while SAP provides descriptions of RFCs in a SAP-specific way. A typical application uses only a subset of the functionality an LOB application provides. The goal of an LOB adapter is to help the adapter consumer find the exact services she needs from the large set this application provides, then make them accessible via a WCF interface. To do this, the adapter exposes the application’s metadata to the adapter consumer, allowing her to choose only the services she needs. It then creates a standard WSDL interface containing just these services. To the adapter consumer, this interface looks like any other WCF interface, allowing her to program against the LOB application as if it were an ordinary service. The adapter takes care of all required translations to preserve this illusion. To help the adapter developer create these adapters, the WCF LOB Adapter SDK includes an Adapter SDK Runtime that provides basic services for every LOB adapter to use. The SDK also includes a Visual Studio-hosted WCF LOB Adapter Development Wizard, as Figure 9 shows. An adapter developer can use this to create an adapter for a particular LOB application.
Figure  SEQ Figure \* ARABIC 9: An adapter developer uses a wizard to create an LOB adapterThis wizard walks the adapter developer through the process of creating a WCF-based adapter to a specific LOB application (step 1). An important part of this is examining the LOB application’s metadata and determining how it should be exposed to the adapter consumer. Once the adapter has been created, this consumer can use it to create WCF applications that access the LOB application. Figure 10 shows how this looks.
Figure  SEQ Figure \* ARABIC 10: An adapter consumer defines an interface containing the services she needs from the LOB applicationTo begin, the adapter consumer browses the LOB application’s metadata to choose