Integrating SoftwareAG X-Registry

Appvance and SoftwareAG took the Appvance As A Service concept into reality. A proof of concept (POC) project for adding governance information to SoftwareAG’s X-Registry. In the POC, Appvance IQ monitors a service registered in X-Registry and sends that service's governance results statistics information to the X-Registry governance’s registry system, including current up / down service status, time since the last problem, and average response times. Within X-Registry, the statistics appear as the registered service's metadata.

Introduction

AIQ has the capacity to work as a soap-based Web service known as Appvance As A Service (PAAS). SoftwareAG owns webMethods, a company providing business process integration to the world's largest corporations and government agencies. SoftwareAG publishes X-Registry (formerly WebMethods and Infravio X-Registry). X-Registry is a commercial software product providing registry, repository, and governance essentials for successful company-wide adoption of service-oriented architecture (SOA). The integration of AIQ and X-Registry delivers necessary functions to X-Registry users needing to govern services, by enabling X-Registry to realize the current state of a service and other governance information by adding PAAS to the governance platform. PAAS runs tests to the Web Services registered in X-Registry and stores governance information about the quality of those services. To accomplish this, several architectural and functional issues needed to be resolved:

Who will write the test?

How will PAAS information be accessed?

Who will update the governance repository’s information?

How often must governance information be updated?

How will the security issues be managed?

Does the monitor test only check the system or should it also update the repository information?

Specification of the Appvance IQ / X-Registry Integration

This figure illustrates the implementation of the Proof of Concept.

The following steps demonstrate the integration.

The user adds SendSMS to X-Registry

Start X-Registry

Start SendSMS

Compile SendSMS project

To compile SendSMS, use an ant jar in the SendSMS folder.

In file SendSMS/dist/TOMCAT/bin run startup.sh or startup.cmd according your OS.

Add SendSMS to X-Registry

Log in to the X-Registry system as a provider manager:

Click Add New Service:

Add SendSMS service information. In the POC the service is named SendSMS and the WSDL
is:

http://localhost:8686/SendSMS/ws/SMS?wsdl

where localhost is the name of the system hosting the SendSMS service

Connect to X-Registry

Start PAAS using the command startup.sh or startup.cmd according to your OS. The files are located in the directory TRUNK/AIQ/TestNetwork/TestNode/bin

Start the PAAS test using the command PAASTest.bat or PAASTest.sh according to your OS. The files are located in the folder TRUNK/SendSMS

The program will connect to X-Registry

Connect to PAAS

The program PAASTest will connect to both systems using web services:

PAAS check SendSMS Status

PAAS system will periodically check the Service SendSMS by a user-specified time; for POC this time is 2 minutes

If the SendSMS test works, the system will state there were no errors

If the service is not running or is not working as expected, PAAS will state the test failed with the reason for the failure

Get GSRS information from PAAS

The PAAS test will automatically get historical service information from PAAS

The service information is XML data known as GSRS (Governance Statistics ResultSet)

The GSRS is known as Appvance-Governance and the document Appvance_Governance.pdf describes its specification and design

This is a sample GSRS for a correctly running service:

Update SendSMS information

PAAS will send the GSRS to X-Registry. Currently, it is posted in the description place, but being restricted to 255 characters is a problem. The future plan is to have the GSRS file added as a separate file and a new field added to indicate the service status

This figure shows a POC display of a service running as expected:

This figure shows a POC display of service not running as expected:

The preceding steps demonstrated how Appvance IQ monitors a service registered in X-Registry and sends service Governing SOA Through Test Automation information, to X-Registry governance registry system, such as current up / down service status, time since the last problem, and average response times as well as how X-registry stores and displays registered service information as metadata.

Further information can be found at:

X-Registry description (Adobe Acrobat PDF format)

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