RE: [ebsoa] Does SOA Require Registry-Based Dynamic Discovery?

My opinion is that a registry is nothing more than a very explicit service discovery device.

An SOA does need a method of discovering services, and consuming them, but this method may in some cases be subtle. For example, my SOA may operate on the premise that consumers all are aware of an enumeration of service types, and their port numbers (think /etc/services in the unix world), and allowable IP ranges for finding services. Clients may be configured something like:

{

Services imap, http, ssh, daytime, pop3, portmap

IPRange 192.168.0.0/24

}

A client with such a configuration does have a way of discovering services that are available to it, and of course, a way of binding to them.

Contrast this with a registry driven SOA:

{

ServiceRegistry http://foo/registry

}

The only difference is in the implementation detail and verbosity of information available. Conceptually, they are the same.

--Matt MacKenzie

From: Chiusano Joseph [mailto:chiusano_joseph@bah.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2004 11:38 AM
To: ebSOA OASIS TC
Subject: [ebsoa] Does SOA Require Registry-Based Dynamic Discovery?

What is the TC's opinion on the answer to the question of "does SOA require registry-based dynamic discovery"? I know that Discovery is a pattern in the .047 spec, which leads me to believe that the position is that SOA does not *require* registry-based discovery.

For example, suppose that:

- 2 organizations are using Web Services in a "SOA-like" manner (meaning shared services represented as Web Services, that are invoked by other Web Services).

- There is no registry-based dynamic discovery, perhaps because the organizations agree that these service locations are completely (or relatively) stable, and that if the locations change, there will be some out-of-band mechanism for propagating updated WSDL documents

Are these 2 organizations therefore *not* using a service-oriented architecture? That is, does the second point completely negate the first? Or, is it all really a matter of business and technical requirements?

Kind Regards,

Joseph Chiusano

Booz Allen Hamilton

Strategy and Technology Consultants to the World

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