Cornerstone for SOA

The ability to register, discover, and govern Web services is an essential requirement for any Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) implementation. This need may not be fully appreciated in the early stages of an SOA roll-out when dealing with a small number of services. However, large organizations will typically need to support a large number of Web services, and as the number of services deployed grows to dozens or hundreds, centralized facilities for access and control of service metadata and artifacts becomes critical. A service registry provides these capabilities and is a key infrastructural component and cornerstone for SOA deployments.

Registry Standards

Web services registries, like other other Web service components, need to be standards-based to foster interoperability across organizational boundaries. Most first-generation service registries were based on the UDDI standard, which focuses on registration of service descriptions (i.e., WSDL descriptions). The is an essential function, but SOA projects generate a broader array of service-related metadata and artifacts than just WSDL's. These include XML schemas, BPEL descriptions, XSLT transforms, and many others. Such artifacts also need to be centrally accessible to promote the benefits of reuse and control, and standard ways of storing and retrieving them, capabilities that aren't addressed by UDDI.

Another standard in this area that accommodates these needs is ebXML Registry. It not only supports Web service registry functions, but also a tightly integrated repository and functions for the organization, storage, and control of any kind of service metadata or artifact. Functions include those for federated web service asset management across multiple repositories. The combined registry and repository capabilities make for a much more flexible and complete service metadata and artifact management solution for large-scale SOA deployments, providing core infrastructural support not only for service discovery, but also for lifecycle management and SOA governance.

Sun's Service Registry: A more complete registry solution

The Service Registry is based on a Sun-led open source implementation of the latest ebXML Registry standard (3.0). In addition to integrating this implementation into the Sun environment, Sun has also added support for UDDI (3.0), providing a service discovery interface for queries made using this protocol. Service Registry's combined support for both registry standards in a single package delivers extended web service metadata and artifact management capabilities with UDDI interoperability for a more complete solution and true SOA cornerstone in enterprise-scale deployments.

Service Registry is included as a component of Sun's Java Enterprise System, beginning with Release 4 in Fall 2005. Service Registry is fully integrated with the Application Server component of Java Enterprise System to enhance overall SOA platform capabilities in both design-time and runtime uses. This is an important dimension in delivery on Sun's drive towards pragmatic SOA.

Major characteristics of Sun's pragmatic approach to SOA supported by Service Registry include:

• Focus on business problems—Use IT and architecture to address business needs.
  Service Registry capabilities support service lifecycle management and SOA governance for better IT control of the SOA environment.
  
• Shared services—Identify common services to avoid duplication and foster reuse.
  Service Registry functions support not only discovery and reuse of services, but all other SOA metadata and artifacts.
• Federated & standards-based—Ensure security and portability while reducing vendor lock-in.
  Service Registry supports federation of multiple registry-repositories, and a variety of security and other standards for security and portability.
• Java/.NET interoperability—Critical to leverage existing investments and infrastructure.
  In addition to the other standards it adheres to, Service Registry supports UDDI discovery enabling registry queries using that protocol.
• Cultural change—Accepted gradually and accelerated via best practices.
  Service Registry provides functions and flexibility helping IT groups to institute and enforce standards and best practices in their SOA deployments.

Service Registry FAQ

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1.

Q:

What is Sun's Service Registry?

A:

Sun's Service Registry, based on an open source registry project developed at SourceForge.net, is a Web Services Registry and Repository for building your Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA). The ability to register, discover, and manage services is an essential requirement for any Service-Oriented infrastructure. Built on an implementation of the ebXML Registry 3.0 standard with added support for UDDI 3.0 (both defined by OASIS), the Service Registry provides the means for registering and discovering web services, and managing associated metadata and artifacts securely and reliably.

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2.

Q:

Why a Service Registry?

A:

A Web Services Registry is required when an organization needs to track and manage increasing numbers of Web services. The promise of Web Services depends on the ability to share assets, which requires centralized facilities for access and control. Most typical Web Service registries today provide basic publish and discovery of Web Service descriptions. They do not provide a standard repository capable of storing SOA artifacts, nor governance capabilities for managing the end-to-end life cycle of SOA artifacts related to Web Services.

With Sun's Service Registry, customers can truly address both Web Services access and SOA governance. By providing standard registry and repository functions, and integration with various components of the Java Enterprise System, Sun enables SOA for a wide range of government and commercial customers around the world.

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3.

Q:

What are some common use cases for Sun's Service Registry?

A:

• Publish, management, governance, discovery and reuse of Web Services and related SOA Artifacts
• Taxonomy management
• XML Schema management
• Vocabulary Management
• Business Process registry
• Medical content repository

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4.

Q:

What are some features and benefits of using Sun's Service Registry?

A:

• Secure, Federated information management of any type of electronic artifacts
• Information artifact discovery using domain-specific queries (SQL, XML filter query syntax)
• Validation of information artifacts using domain-specific business rules
• Version control, life cycle management and governance of information artifacts
• Standard and user-defined taxonomies that may be used to classify information artifacts
• Ability to define associations between information artifacts
• Notification of changes to information artifacts to subscribers
• Custom, fine-grained role based access control
• Complete audit trail / event log of changes to information artifacts
• Internationalization features
• Tightly integrated into Java Enterpise System

The figure below illustrates the key features. Features provided by basic Web Service registries are listed in light-grey font. Sun's Service Registry also provides many additional features needed for SOA Governance as shown by dark font color.

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5.

Q:

What standards does Sun's Service Registry support?

A:

The Sun's Service Registry is based on established standards.

XML Standards

• ebXML Registry 3.0
• UDDI 3.0
• XACML 1.0 for Role Based Access Control Policies
• SOAP 1.1 with Attachments
• WSDL 1.1
• XML Signature 1.0
• XSLT 1.0
• Web Services Security: SOAP Message Security 1.0
• Web Services Security: SOAP Message with Attachments (SwA) Profile 1.0
• WS-I: Basic Security Profile 1.0
• WS-I: Basic Profile 1.1
• SAML 2.0

Java Standards
The Service Registry project is implemented entirely on the Java Platform.

• J2EE 1.4 Platform: Provides a robust application deployment environment and supports XML standards (JAX-RPC 1.1, SAAJ 1.2, JAXR 1.0, JAXP 1.2).
• JAXB 1.0: XML Data Binding

Other Standards

• SQL-92

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6.

Q:

When is Sun's Service Registry available?

A:

Service Registry is included as a component of Sun's Java Enterprise System, beginning with Release 4 in Fall 2005.

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Summary

• SOA Governance requires more than what today's registries have to offer
• Sun's Service Registry delivers both web service access and governance in SOA deployments
• Supports both UDDI 3.0 and ebXML Registry 3.0 standards
• The only registry that supports both UDDI 3.0 and ebXML Registry 3.0 standards
• Tightly integrated into Java Enterprise System
• Unique single registry solution supports wide customer adoption across diverse domains

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