What is new in Version 8.5.5
New, simplified configuration profile
A new service management profile is available for WSRR. The service management profile provides a simpler governance lifecycle for service management than the governance enablement profile, which remains supported in V8.5.5.
The service management profile includes component models, lifecycles, governance policies, security controls, and web user interface commands, for you to define services in your service-oriented architecture (SOA) environment, and manage those services from initial specification through to deployment in production. The service management profile lifecycle is appropriate for implementing a simplified governance process and has fewer states than the governance enablement profile.
Enhanced view of service registry items
WSRR V8.5.5 introduces an enhanced detail view for business capability items and their subtypes, and for the capability versions of the business capability. This view is enabled by default for new installations of V8.5.5, which use the service management profile. For upgrades from V8.5.0 or earlier, the enhanced detail view is disabled by default, and must be enabled for use if required. The enhanced detail view is also disabled for installations that are configured to use other profiles.
- Overview: Displays standard details about the capability version item and its defined relationship targets; for example, the name, version or release, and details of the owning organization.
- Interface: Displays details about the defined service interfaces and assigned operations for the capability version item, grouped by service level definition (SLD).
- Endpoints: Displays details about the related endpoints for the capability version item, grouped by SLD.
- Consumers: Displays details about the consumers of the capability version item, grouped by SLD.
- Consumes: Displays details about the services
that the capability version item is consuming.
The available tabs and the level of detail on each tab are dependent on the settings that are configured for capability versions in the Detail widget.
- Modifying the default properties of the version and changing its relationship targets
- Adding or removing service interfaces and available operations to or from related SLDs, and adding or removing SLDs to or from the version
- Adding or removing endpoints to or from related SLDs, and adding or removing SLDs to or from the version
A new action for creating new versions of business capability items or subtypes is also now available as a default configuration setting for the Detail widget. If enabled for business capability items or subtypes, you can create versions when viewing a capability item in the Detail widget. You can specify the version information in the Overview, Interface, and Endpoints tabs that are provided.
- Enabling the enhanced detail view
- Configuring the Detail widget, Configuring Relationships, and Relationships for capability versions
- Using the Detail widget to view and work with service registry items
- Editing the Overview tab, Editing the Interface tab, and Editing the Endpoints tab
- Creating a version of a business capability or subtype
Simplified consumption requests
A new action for assigning consumers to service versions and process versions is now available as a default configuration setting for the Detail widget. If enabled for service and process version items, you can choose to consume a version that is currently on display in the Detail widget.
When you raise the request on the version, you can either register a new business capability (application, service, or process) as the consumer, or you can select the consumer from a list of existing capability versions. You can optionally specify service level requirements, which will be used to generate a service level agreement between the consuming capability and the provider of the consumed service or process version.
Support for importing services data from a spreadsheet into WSRR for centralized tracking
A new Bulk Loader utility (bulkloader.bat or bulkloader.sh) is available for loading web services data, which is currently maintained in a spreadsheet, into WSRR in bulk. The spreadsheet that provides input to the utility must be appropriately completed and formatted in order for its data to be correctly mapped when it is imported into WSRR.
For each service, application, or process that is defined in the spreadsheet, the import operation creates the following objects in WSRR: business capability item, capability version item, and service level definition. The objects are created with a governance record, and any relationships that are defined in the spreadsheet are created between the objects.
The Bulk Loader utility is installed as part of the WebSphere Service Registry and Repository Client installation, and runs on Linux and Windows only. Supported formats for the spreadsheet are Microsoft Excel and OpenDocument Spreadsheet, and sample .xls and .ods spreadsheets are provided for reference in the installation directory.
WSRR Studio updates
Transitions that are created in UML diagrams, and which are not from the initial state, now automatically include a signal trigger event that sets the transitions to operation-based. (Transitions from the initial state remain automatic.) By default, the associated signal for a newly created or renamed transition is assigned the same name as the transition. However, where the same signal is added to multiple transitions, it is not renamed if one of those transitions is renamed. The signals that are automatically created with transitions can be replaced if required.
The new service management profile is included in the list of available profiles when creating a configuration project to manage and configure a configuration profile. The WSRR 6.3 profile template is no longer included in this list.
Performance improvements
Performance improvements have been made when loading service technical information, such as Web Services Description Languages (WSDLs) and XML Schema Definitions (XSDs) into WSRR.
Performance enhancements have also been made to the WSRR export function that is used to export and import collections of entities and their associated metadata between two instances of WSRR at the same release. For new installations of WSRR V8.5.5, the export function provides a default enhanced export mode for fast exports. For upgrades from WSRR V8.5.0 or earlier, the default export mode from the earlier version will remain in effect; faster exports can, however, be configured in the upgraded V8.5.5 instance by using WSRR Studio.
A new property has been added to the text search function that supports enhanced searching through indexing. The property is represented by the <maxIncrementalChangeCount> element in the text search configuration file, and defines the number of incremental updates to make to the text search index before saving it to the database. This property is enabled by default in new installations of WSRR V8.5.5 that use the service enablement profile, but is disabled for any new governance enablement profile that you create. If upgrading from WSRR V8.5.0 or earlier, or if you create a governance enablement profile in V8.5.5, you can improve indexing performance by editing the text search configuration file to add an entry for the <maxIncrementalChangeCount> setting.