1 Chapter 1. Introduction and adapter overview This chapter discusses the scope of this redbook and lists the order in which the topics are presented in the following chapters, illustrating the strategic vision for IBM On Demand Business. Here, you can find an overview of the key technology and architectural concepts. The following topics are covered: Scope and objectives of the book Introduction to IBM On Demand Business WebSphere Process Server WebSphere Integration Developer and Rational Application Developer The second topic discusses the general motivation of the ever-present relationship between business goals and IT goals in an evolutionary business scenario. It also provides a general overview of service-oriented architecture (SOA) as the glue between the business and IT worlds. The next topic provides a high-level description of WebSphere Process Server, the primary product in the implementation of service-oriented architectures (SOAs) and the product responsible for providing the execution environment for SOA artifacts (custom WebSphere Adapters are a special artifact in integration). Finally it introduces the tools involved in the development process of adapters. © Copyright IBM Corp. 2006. All rights reserved. 3