Blog Xebia France

Service frame of reference in an architecture SOA

In an orientated architecture service, frame of reference or service catalogue belongs to a family of components intended for what is generally called the gouvernance. The gouvernance is a vanishing notion, from which definition makes the object of bitter debates, but that, whatever is the one that is kept, returns at the need to acquire tools and procedures likely to assure the control of the complexity of architecture and to measure consistency.

Service frame of reference is an inevitable to control services.

Traditionally, and in a macroscopic way, a service frame of reference in a distributed architecture includes two big categories of functionality:

• Functions of register which aim at making easier the functioning of service facilities:
• Access control.
• Correspondence between the different names which every service in different subsystems can have.
• Location and routeing.
• Transcodification and standardization of codes (including codes errors).
• Functions of directory which aim at consolidating knowledge job:
• Be the unique reference carrying the knowledge of the services of the firm.
• Carry the knowledge of formats of exchanges.
• Differentiate the services which require an answer of those who do not expect from it.
• Identify the functional membership of every flux.
• Manage versions.

Functions of register are intended for the execution of services. They allow to the service consumers to locate the suppliers (in adequate version), to identify the technical modalities of correlation, to validate formats of exchange and to prove the policies of access. They address the dimension as routeing to be known as from the information of context, they give the possibility of determining target service, mode of access (M.O.M., Web Services), linked resources (name of the queue MQ, URL of access, etc.).
These functions of register lean most often on standard UDDI v3, and group of supplementary standards for the m tadonn es different and strategies (WSDL 1.1, SOAP w / wo Attachment 1.1, OASIS Web SECURITY, XACML 1.0, SAML 2.0 service).

Functions of directory, as for them, give a broad palette of functionality intended for the personnels implicated in the implementation of SOA: modelling and structuring of frame of reference, access to the material of services, research, management of the cycle of life (possibly with processes of approval), analyses impact, reporting, etc. This functionality is offered through more or less sophisticated and ergonomic graphic interfaces.
These functions do not make the object of standards, and are consequently a strong factor of differentiation between software offer.

Frame of reference assures the coherence therefore between the different nomenclature of applications.
In its classical acceptation, frame of reference must be and remain the only point of reference of services. He constitutes a central component of architecture, and requires in this title of the procedures of management and of adapted administration.