The expanding world of the “repistry”
The SOA Governance space was given a little jolt yesterday with BEA announcing their purchase of Flashline. Dana Gardner posted some good analysis on this on his blog at ZDNet, as did Neil Ward-Dutton.
What I’m interested in is how big the “repistry” (regository?) will become over time? As I think about it, the registry/repository is somewhat like the database of SOA. Most solutions, after all, need some form of database. The repistry of SOA has allowed convergence of the development time asset repository with the run-time service registry. What’s next? In my mind, we must now proceed into the management repository. The buzzword frequently associated with systems management is ITIL. Guess what? You’ll frequently see another repositry associated with that space called the Configuration Management Database, or CMDB. A convergence across this space makes perfect sense. Part of the metadata associated with a service needs to be the machines where it is deployed. Odds that, that information may already be in the CMDB.
If you can see where I’m going with this, you’ll now see that the problems that were created as new databases were put out for every client-server application could come back to haunt us, as we now have repositries for niche areas that overlap with each other, causing potential for replication and synchronization issues. Do I then create a repositry services layer that provides a single view of the truth? Do I need some form of repositry federation? How about a meta-repsoitry? Of course, the repositry itself already was a metadata source, so now I have meta-metadata. Ugh, I’m giving myself a headache. I have full faith that the vendors will become aware of this, and eventually we will have a repositry that encompasses the capabilities of UDDI registries, software asset management, configuration management, and much more. The real question is whether any enterprise will have mature enough processes to leverage it all successfully…
Technorati tags: soa uddi regsitry repository
7 Responses to “The expanding world of the “repistry””
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yup, the march of the metadata. you might want to add SML to your expanding list (CMDB, ITIL). SML is and XML based language to describe system assets. SML is based on Microsoft’s SDM. Here’s a link: http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/07/31/HNtensml_1.html
I’m trying to carve out time to look into all of this… I might just start at the bare bones, OMG’s MOF: http://www.omg.org/technology/documents/modeling_spec_catalog.htm#UML
Sounds like a good project for say November, when the hunters force me inside. -brenda
[…] Todd Biske says we may begin to encountering issues untangling these mechanisms. He rechristened the registry/repository with a new buzzname: the "repistry." "The registry/repository is somewhat like the database of SOA… The repository of SOA has allowed convergence of the development time asset repository with the run-time service registry," Biske points out. […]
The SOA Governance Acquisition Race Continues… …
This morning, webMethods announced it has agreed to acquire privately-held Infravio for approximately $38 million in cash. This acquisition comes on the heels of webM’s purchase of semantic metadata management technology company, Cerebra. Technology…
[…] As we know, last year the buzz was around ESBs (Dave railed on those too), this year the buzz has been around governance. He correctly points out that most of the vendor products “are directories, repositories, or registries, at their essence, and may or may not include policy management.” He then states that there is “no clear architectural use case for most of these tools” and that they are “application development support tools, akin to configuration management and metadata management of years gone by.” Hmm… I think someone else pointed out the relationship of these tools to configuration management databases. […]
[…] In short, I think if you nail down the capabilities, eliminating the grey area in integration and transformation, and have a clear idea of who in the organization will use the system, the product space should be much easier to navigate, for now. This convergence will continue, as smaller vendors get gobbled up and registry/repository becomes a more integrated part of the solution as a policy repository. It will begin to converge with the Configuration Management database space as I’ve previously discussed. Network devices continue to converge with MPLS and the addition of VoIP capabilities. If you have an intermediary today, continue to watch the space every 6 months to a year to see what’s happening and know when it might make sense to converge. […]
[…] James Governor of RedMonk has a post that he claims is the “Most exciting idea in ages: an ATOM/LDAP mashup.“ It’s actually a very interesting idea to me, especially because he suggests applying it to the management domain. I’ve previously posted (here and here) about the convergence of metadata, and how I’ve seen parallels between Service Repository, Configuration Management databases, Asset Management systems, and potentially even LDAP. So, if we’re doing an ATOM/LDAP mashup, is ATOM equally applicable to other items in the metadata management domain. I suspect that it will be. Nearly all management specs I’ve seen have a resource-oriented view, and it would seem that the combination of ATOM and REST could be a very good fit on top of this. Hopefully James will keep us all updated on the progress of this exciting idea. […]
[…] The expanding world of the “repistry”: This post from August 25, 2006 discusses registries, repositories, CMDBs and the like. […]