Managing SOA Metadata: Registeries or Repositories?
By Carol Weiszmann & By Susan Messenheimer
May 1, 2006 —
(Page 1 of 6)
As deployments of service-oriented architectures (SOAs) survive initial pilot projects and begin to spread into more extensive use, there’s a need to better organize, access and manage runtime metadata such as XML schemas, SOAP messages and WSDL interface definitions. Spreadsheets and Web page listings of services no longer suffice.
“SOA registries are playing a key role in development, specifically in assembling composite applications,” said Sanjay Sarathy, vice president of marketing at Above All Software. “Here, you’re trying to integrate multiple systems, and you need a place where you can store the metadata and the artifacts from those disparate pieces.”
For purposes of reuse, the only way to properly store metadata is in an SOA-type repository. “And it’s important not just to store the metadata,” Sarathy added, “but to use the registry to consider the relationships across the different elements. Ultimately, you’re creating a virtual application portfolio that cuts across your development efforts no matter what application environment you’re dealing with.”
Various kinds of metadata management solutions are currently in use, but most provide only limited support for managing runtime metadata. That’s because general-purpose metadata repositories haven’t been designed or optimized for runtime environments and cannot manage detailed, implementation-level metadata. In contrast, registries deliver more focused management of runtime artifacts (for example, services and directories), although they generally lack the breadth and depth of repository functionality.
Gartner analysts Michael Blechar and Jess Thompson, in “When to Use Metadata Repositories, Registries or Both,” offer an analogy:
“Registries play a role similar to that of a card catalog in a library. As a catalog points to the books a reader needs to access, an SOA registry points to the services a requester needs to access. Repositories manage metadata about a broader set of artifacts [such as] libraries, card catalogs, books, and processes such as checking a book out and returning it.”
These days, however, emerging SOA deployments are blurring the distinctions between repositories and registries. Repository solutions have begun to incorporate what Gartner calls “registry-light capabilities,” while registries are including metadata beyond what’s required for runtime artifacts.
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