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• mechanisms to support the storage, referencing, and access to normative definitions of one or more versioning schemes that may be applied to identify different aggregations of descriptive information, where the different schemes may be versions of a versioning scheme itself;
• configuration management mechanisms to capture the contents of the each aggregation and apply a unique identifier in a manner consistent with an identified versioning scheme;
• one or more mechanisms to support the storage, referencing, and access to conversion relationships between versioning schemes, and the mechanisms to carry out such conversions.

Description makes use of defined semantics, where the semantics may be used for categorization or providing other property and value information for description classes. This requires the following capabilities:

• semantic models that provide normative descriptions of the utilized terms, where the models may range from a simple dictionary of terms to an ontology showing complex relationships and capable of supporting enhanced reasoning;
• mechanisms to support the storage, referencing, and access to these semantic models;
• configuration management mechanisms to capture the normative description of each semantic model and to apply a unique identifier in a manner consistent with an identified versioning scheme;
• one or more mechanisms to support the storage, referencing, and access to conversion relationships between semantic models, and the mechanisms to carry out such conversions.

Descriptions include reference to policies defining conditions of use and optionally contracts representing agreement on policies and other conditions. This requires the following capabilities (as also enumerated under governance):

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• mechanisms to support the storage, referencing, and access to normative definitions of one or more versioning schemes that may be applied to identify different compositions of descriptive information, where the different schemes may be versions of a versioning scheme itself;
• configuration management mechanisms to capture the contents of the each composition and apply a unique identifier in a manner consistent with an identified versioning scheme;
• one or more mechanisms to support the storage, referencing, and access to conversion relationships between versioning schemes, and the mechanisms to carry out such conversions.
• metamodels and semantic annotations that provide normative descriptions of the utilized terms, where the models may range from a simple dictionary of terms to an ontology showing complex relationships and capable of supporting enhanced reasoning;
• mechanisms to support the storage, referencing, and access to these semantic models;
• configuration management mechanisms to capture the normative description of each semantic model and to apply a unique identifier in a manner consistent with an identified versioning scheme;
• one or more mechanisms to support the storage, referencing, and access to conversion relationships between semantic models, and the mechanisms to carry out such conversions.
• descriptions to enable the policy modules to be visible, where the description includes a unique identifier for the policy and the metamodel representation of the meaning of terms used to describe the policy, its functions, and its effects;
• one or more discovery mechanisms that enable searching for policies that best meet the search criteria specified by the service participant; where the discovery mechanism will have access to the individual policy descriptions through some repository mechanism;
• accessible storage of policies and policy descriptions, so service participants can access, examine, and use the policies as defined.
• access to metrics information about SOA resources obtained from the platform infrastructure monitoring and notification capabilities
• mechanisms to catalog and enable discovery of which metrics are available for a described resources and information on how these metrics can be accessed;
• mechanisms to catalog and enable discovery of compliance records associated with policies and contracts that are based on these metrics.
• one or more mechanisms to capture, describe, store, discover, and retrieve interaction logs, execution contexts, and the combined interaction descriptions;
• one or more mechanisms for attaching to any results the means to identify and retrieve the interaction description under which the results were generated.
• tools to facilitate identifying description elements that are to be aggregated to assemble the composite description;
• tools to facilitate identifying the sources of information to associate with the description elements;
• tools to collect the identified description elements and their associated sources into a standard, referenceable format that can support general access and understanding;
• tools to automatically update the composite description as the component sources change, and to consistently apply versioning schemes to identify the new description contents and the type and significance of change that occurred.
• one or more discovery mechanisms that enable searching for described resources that best meet the criteria specified by a service participant, where the discovery mechanism will have access to individual descriptions, possibly through some repository mechanism;
• tools to appropriately track users of the descriptions and notify them when a new version of the description is available.

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