The thick adapter s layer of abstraction makes managing the movement or invoking processes painless. Since the abstraction layer and the manager handle the difference between all the applications requiring integration, there is almost no need for programming. Thick interfaces are capable of accomplishing this, because they provide a layer of sophisticated software that hides the complexities of the source and target application interfaces from the message broker user. The user sees only a business-like representation of the process and the metadata information as managed by the abstraction layer and the adapter. In many cases, the user connects many systems through this abstraction layer and through the graphical user interface, without ever having to resort to hand coding.
Repositories play a major role in the thick adapter scenario.
The repository is able to understand much of the information about the source and target applications, and to use that information as a mechanism to interact with those applications on behalf of the message broker. Moreover, several abstraction layers may be created around the types of applications to be integrated. In addition to the thick versus thin debate, there is also the notion of static versus dynamic adapters. Static adapters , the most common today, have to be manually coded with what s contained within the source and the target systems. For example, static adapters have no mechanism for understanding anything about the schema of connected databases, and therefore must be configured by hand to receive information from the data source.