Sun readies SOA Web services registry

Sun Microsystems on Wednesday is announcing early access availability of Sun Service Registry for tracking and managing Web services.

The combined registry-repository offering supports the UDDI v3 and ebXML Registry 3.0 specifications and is intended to provide governance for SOAs. Governance encompasses control and policy management, according to Sun. Key functions of the registry include enablement of SOAs by providing centralized access to discovery, use, and reuse of Web services and secure, federated information management.

Featured is a repository for storing service metadata, and capabilities such as lifecycle management for Web services. The registry was spawned from the open source freebXML project.

A final version of the registry will be part of the Java Enterprise System 4 server middleware stack this fall. “We’re trying to make JES the platform for SOA,” said Ashesh Badani, group marketing manager for SOA and Enterprise Software at Sun.

“There’s no [additional] price for this product. The way you get it is as part of the JES,” Badani said.

The product also defines information models and relationships among metadata and ensures conformance of published services and content. Future JES components will integrate with the registry, including the Access Manager for user authentication, and the Application Server deployer/administrator for managing service lifecycles.

Sun’s Service Registry represents the company’s entry into SOA, said Dana Gardner, senior analyst at Yankee Group.

“I think this sort of inaugurates Sun’s move into SOA. A registry is certainly a key component of creating and managing an SOA,” Gardner said. Sun, however, still lacks an enterprise service bus and security and management capabilities for SOA, Gardner said.

Sun’s registry differs from rival offerings from companies such as Systinet because it combines UDDI and ebXML functions, Badani said. “We’re looking to see what Microsoft and IBM release [in this space]. We’ll wait and watch,” he said.

Customer applications can integrate via Service Registry APIs and protocols.

The early access release also will be part of the Java Web Services Developer Pack 1.6, which will support “Fast Information Set,” for boosting Web services performance through binary encoding of the XML information set.  Version 1.6 is set to ship at the end of this month, concurrent with the holding of the JavaOne conference.