Bhanu provided a good description of the difference.
I’d offer this additional advice. In my experience, it is generally preferrable to use basic notification and manage the database elements directly rather than have the adapter manage them. When the adapter manages these elements they are sometimes dropped and recreated when you don’t anticipate that to happen–which can result in missing data activity that you wanted to capture.
#Adapters-and-E-Standards#Integration-Server-and-ESB#webMethods