The ability to publish and discover information models will be supported by the semantic infrastructure, and the platform will leverage these capabilities.
One of the key requirements for participants interacting with each other in the context of a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is achieving visibility. Before services can interoperate, the participants have to be visible to each other by whatever means are appropriate. Visibility is expressed in terms of awareness, willingness, and reachability.
The SOA concept of awareness relates to the category of publication and discovery. A service participant is aware of another participant if it has access to a description of that participant with sufficient completeness to establish the other requirements of visibility.
Awareness is inherently a function of a participant; awareness can be established without any action on the part of the target participant other than the target providing appropriate descriptions. Awareness is often discussed in terms of consumer awareness of providers but the concepts are equally valid for provider awareness of consumers.
Awareness can be decomposed into the creation of descriptions, making them available, and discovering the descriptions. Discovery can be initiated or it can be by notification. Initiated discovery for business may require formalization of the required capabilities and resources to achieve business goals.
Mechanisms providing support for awareness will have the following minimum capabilities:
- creation of Description, preferably conforming to a standard Description format and structure;
- publishing of Description directly to a consumer or through a third party mediator;
- discovery of Description, preferably conforming to a standard for Description discovery;
- notification of Description updates or notification of the addition of new and relevant Descriptions;
- classification of Description elements according to standardized classification schemes.
Functional Profile
- 1.4.1 - Publish and Discover Information Models The ability to publish and discover information models will be supported by the semantic infrastructure, and the platform will leverage these capabilities.
