Maintaining the Core – Service Repository - Applied SOA Patterns on the Oracle Platform - page 295

Chapter 5. Maintaining the Core - Service
Repository
In our endeavor to create the Agnostic Composition Controller using probably the most
popular SOA pattern, we demonstrated the role of two out of three core SOA operational
frameworks, covering Service Creation, Composition, and Governance patterns. Focusing
on its most complex realization, based on dynamic service discovery and invocation, we
delved into the problem of Metadata Centralization and its relation to message structure
and service layering: logical and physical; we cannot disregard these any longer. Building a
Service Inventory without a plan in mind will produce results far worse than point-to-point
spaghetti. Unfortunately, there is no tool to guide us right after the installation. Only the
SOA principles (yes, to a meaningful extent) help us build a practical SOA inventory with
a working Governance Reference model.
This chapter is the focal point of this topic. First, we will give you a vendor-neutral tax-
onomy for a Service Inventory you can use with any tool without significant investments.
Second, we will see how to roll it up to the Oracle Enterprise Repository and Service Re-
gistry. The Foundational Inventory pattern, together with the Inventory Implementation and
Governance patterns, is the biggest category in the SOA patterns catalogue and covers all
the aspects of a service lifecycle. We will try to cover all these aspects—from requirement
analysis, service design, testing, and runtime monitoring to decommissioning.