WebSphere Service Registry and Repository Newsletter
March 2015
Announcing WSRR V8.5.5 - Simplifying the registry experience
As announced on February 10th, WebSphere Service Registry and Repository (WSRR) V8.5.5, the newest
release of WSRR, will be available on March 20th for general availability. The focus of the WSRR release for
V8.5.5 is simplification, simplification, simplification. Let’s discuss each of the main areas of simplification…
Simplified service view
One of the primary focuses of the registry simplification for V8.5.5 is to open up the registry experience to the
casual user. For example, the business user looking for information about a business service. Or the IT user
looking for information about the service they need to consume and what the interface is like. Prior to V8.5.5,
some knowledge of the underlying WSRR object model was required in order to make full use of the registry.
That is no longer the case once you upgrade! WSRR V8.5.5 provides a simplified view of a service with
service information available through easy-to-use tabs.
Consider the following figure:
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All of the relevant service information is available in one place. We call this capability the “Enhanced Detail
View” (EDV) of the service. The EDV starts with the basic service overview information, including the ability to
pick the version to be viewed if the latest version is not the one desired.
By clicking the Interface tab, one can then view information about the service interface and operations – for
example:
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Endpoint management of endpoints for various environments is a key use case for a service registry. In the
following figure, you can see that both the production endpoint and staging endpoint for the service version
are presented. WSRR will automatically identify the environment of the endpoint based on the endpoint name.
For example, the endpoints in the example have “staging” and “production” in their names, allowing WSRR to
identify and instantiate that information in the Environment field.
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Understanding which other services and applications are consuming a service is another key capability of a
competent service registry. By clicking the Consumers tab, one can view all such consumers of a service
version – for example:
In a similar fashion, one will want to know what services, if any, this service consumes. By clicking the
Consumes tab, one can do so:
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Simplification of service registration
Service registration is something that’s useful for either new business services that are required to undergo
governance during the service development lifecycle, or existing production services that the enterprise will
benefit from having available in the shared registry (WSRR). With V8.5.5, there’s really no reason to not
register every service and therefore take advantage of all of the benefits of WSRR as a service registry and a
centralized metadata repository.
So let’s walk through the process of registering a service.
The first step is to enter basic overview information about the service, including the name of the service, a
description, and an email address for the owner of the service who can be contacted for questions and
comments. Additionally, you can supply information about the owning organization and service
documentation.
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Next, you add the first version of the service, or a new version if the service already exists.
Having added the service version, now add the service information. Organization information for the version is
automatically inherited from the service.
The next step is to add the WSDL-based or REST-based service interface information. If a WSDL is being
used for the service interface, the WSDLs can be searched for and then loaded into WSRR. Any endpoints
found in the WSDL are automatically added to the service endpoint information. In addition, a WSRR “Service
Level Definition” (SLD) is automatically added for the service.
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If the endpoints are not in the service, they can be added by searching or by creating manually.
Finally, the service is created and ready to be found and used by the registry stakeholders:
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Registering service consumption
Of course, another powerful capability of a registry is to register the consumption of a service and create any
Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that pertain to that consumption. Start the service consumption wizard and
select or create the consuming service version or application:
If creating the consuming service information, enter as per the instructions above in the Simplification of
service registration section.
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If identifying an existing consumer in WSRR, find and select the consuming service or application.
One can provide information about the intended usage for the Service Level Agreement. As part of your
runtime policy setup for the service, an SLA policy can be created that would be enforced by middleware such
as DataPower.
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When you click the Finish button, the consumer relationship is created.
Bulk service registration tool
Many users of WSRR have requested that there be some method whereby existing services could be added
to the registry in a simple and streamlined fashion. In response to this request, a bulk service registration tool
that works with a standard Microsoft Excel or OpenDocument Spreadsheet (ODS) spreadsheet has been
included in WSRR V8.5.5. The Bulk Loader utility, which is command-line based, will import the metadata for
multiple services or applications into WSRR. The metadata is read in from the spreadsheet, as shown in the
following figure.
Conclusion
We hope that you are as excited as we are to see these new capabilities in WSRR and that you agree they
greatly enhance the usability of the product. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to
contact the WSRR Product Manager, Robert Laird, at [email protected].
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