WSRR and the SOA service lifecycle

IBM's service-oriented architecture (SOA) is a way of designing and running the software portion of an information technology infrastructure so that it supports the various individual and interrelated functions that are needed to operate a particular enterprise.

The SOA approach breaks down a company's business tasks (such as checking customer credit or opening a new bank account) and the underlying information technology into reusable components or services. These services can be combined and recombined as clients' business needs change. SOA allows these services, no matter how different their supporting systems and technologies are, to talk to each other using the open communication environment it creates, and to interoperate so that IT supports interrelated business processes. SOA makes it possible to share information not only throughout an enterprise but with customers, suppliers and partners - another key requirement when moving toward on-demand business.

WSRR focuses on a minimalist set of metadata describing functions, requirements and semantics of these services. It interacts and federates with other metadata stores that support specific phases of the SOA lifecycle and capture more detailed information about services relevant in that lifecycle phase; examples of specialized repositories include a reusable asset manager in development or configuration management database in service management. For the minimalist metadata set WSRR allows users to manage their lifecycle from development through deployment to their use by SOA run times and in service management.

WSRR can be used throughout all phases of the SOA lifecycle.

SOA lifecycle: Model, Assemble, Deploy, Manage, with underlying Governance and Best Practices

The SOA lifecycle can be summarized as follows:

Governance and best practices support the lifecycle through the use of financial transparency, business and IT alignment, and process control.

The following subtopics explain WSRR support for the phases of the SOA lifecycle: