Utility Tools

CHAPTER 12

Registry Manager

This chapter describes the registry browsing and publishing functionality provided by the Novell exteNd Director development environment. It contains the following topics:

 
Top of page

About registry standards

The exteNd Director development environment supports the following registry standards:

Registry standard

Description

UDDI

Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration

UDDI is designed to give businesses a uniform way to describe their Web Services, discover other companies' services, and understand the methods needed to conduct e-business in an automated or semiautomated way with remote partners.

ebXML

Electronic Business using eXtensible Markup Language

The ebXML Registry and Repository, like UDDI, enables the storing and sharing of information between parties to allow e-business collaboration.

WSIL

Web Services Inspection Language (also known as WS-Inspection)

WSIL is designed to be more lightweight and portable than UDDI. It's an emerging standard intended to pick up where UDDI leaves off.

 
Top of page

About the Registry Manager

The exteNd Director development environment provides a Registry Manager (accessible through the Registries tab in the Navigation Pane) and a facility for defining registry profiles. The registry capabilities include:

 
Top of page

Defining registry profiles

Registries are specified by URL and can be local or Web-based. Before accessing a registry in the exteNd Director development environment, you define a profile for that registry. Some predefined registry profiles are provided.

Procedure To define a registry profile:

  1. Select Tools>Profiles from the menu.

    The Profiles dialog opens.

  2. Select the Registries tab.

    UDDIProfiles

  3. If you are editing or deleting an existing profile, select it from the Profile name list box and click Edit or Delete. If you are creating a new profile, click New.

  4. When the New (or Edit) dialog displays, first specify the following:

    Option

    Description

    Profile name

    Name of the profile

    Registry type

    Type of registry: ebXML, UDDI, or WSIL

    The dialog displays different options depending on which registry type you select.

  5. If you select ebXML or UDDI as the registry type, the dialog displays:

    UDDICreate

    Complete the dialog as follows:

    ebXML/UDDI option

    Description

    Inquiry URL

    The URL through which the registry can be queried

    Publish URL

    The URL through which new services can be published to the registry

    User name and Credential

    The information (if any) that the registry provider assigned to you for publishing access

    Include in Registry Search

    Specifies whether you want to include this registry in the default search set

    If you select WSIL as the registry type, the dialog displays:

    UDDICreateWSIL

    Complete the dialog as follows (use the + and - buttons to add or delete entries in the WSIL registry list):

    WSIL option

    Description

    Organization

    A name for the organization

    WSIL URL

    The fully qualified WSIL URL, ending in inspection.wsil

    User name and Credential

    The information (if any) that the registry provider assigned to you for publishing access

    Include in Registry Search

    Specifies whether you want to include this registry in the default search set

  6. Click OK.

Once you have defined a registry profile, you can use the Registry Manager to browse the registry and you can publish services to the registry.

 
Top of page

Browsing registries

The Registry Manager allows you to browse registries through the Registries tab in the Navigation Pane. There are two subpanes within the Registries tab: the Organization Pane and the Service Pane.

UDDIBrowse

 
Top of section

Information displayed

The Registry Manager displays the following types of information.

Organization Pane   The organization section of a registry might include these types of information:

Information

Icon

Description

Organization name

regIconBusinessName

Organization name used in this registry

Description


Short phrase describing the organization

Categories

regIconCategories

Categories to which the organization belongs

Classification schemes come from at least three sources: NAICS codes for industry segments, UNSPSC for product and service classifications, and geographic information

Identifiers

regIconIdentifiers

Information about the organization, such as a DUNS number

Services

regIconServices

A list of services offered by the organization, such as Web Services callable via HTTP and other services such as sales and technical support contact information

You can select a service name to display its details in the Service Pane

Service Pane   A service entry in a registry might include these types of information:

Information

Icon

Description

Service name

regIconServiceName

The name of the service

Organization name

regIconBusinessName

The organization offering the service

Description


A short phrase describing the service

Binding

regIconBinding

The URL for invoking the service

tModel

regIconTModel

Data describing the service

A UDDI registry stores the data as a tModel, which is a set of name/value pairs; the tModel node may be followed by a description

Overview URL


The URL of a document describing how to use the tModel data

For a Web Service, this is usually a WSDL document

Categories

regIconCategories

Categories for the service

The categorization has two parts: a name (for example, uddi-org:types) and a value (for example, wsdlSpec). The value wsdlSpec specifies that a WSDL document is available for the service. Other types of services can use other classification schemes.

 
Top of section

Popup menus

Each pane in the Registry Manager has a popup menu.

Organization Pane   To view the popup menu for Organization, place the cursor in an entry in the Organization Pane and right-click. The following menu displays.

Menu item

Description

Copy Text

Allows you to copy text from the currently selected organization tree node to another area or file

Clear Tree

Clears the pane of organization information that you retrieved from your search

Delete Organization

Deletes the selected organization (if you have permission). Asks you to confirm before deleting the organization.

Advanced Search

Allows you to perform a sophisticated search by organization

For more information    For more information, see Searching by organization

Service Pane   To view the popup menu for Service, place the cursor in an entry in the Service pane and right-click. The following menu displays.

Menu item

Description

Copy Text

Allows you to copy text from the currently selected service tree node to another area or file

Clear Tree

Clears the pane of service information that you retrieved from your search

Retrieve WSDL

Retrieves the WSDL for the selected service from the registry. You can also do this using the Retrieve WSDL button.

Delete Service

Deletes the selected service (if you have permission). Asks you to confirm before deleting the service.

Advanced Search

Allows you to perform a sophisticated search by service

For more information    For more information, see Searching by service

 
Top of section

Action buttons

The following illustration shows the location of the various action buttons on the Organization and Service panes.

RegManButtons

 
Top of section

Searching by organization

You search by organization in the Organization Pane.

Procedure To search organizations by name or keyword:

  1. Enter a complete or partial organization name or keyword in the text box below Organization.

    TIP:   You can also enter a group of organization names separated by a vertical bar, which allows you to search for multiple groups of organizations. For example: XMethods|IBM|Sun.

  2. Click the Search button (shaped like a downturned arrow).

    While the search is under way, the Stop button (normally grayed out) is red. The search can take several minutes. To interrupt the search, click the Stop button; partial search results will display in the Organization Pane.

    A list of matching organizations appears in tree-view form. Each top-level node in the tree is a registry, each child of a registry is an organization name, and below each organization is detail information consisting of descriptions, categories, and services.

    businesspaneresult

    Clicking a service entry in the (upper) Organization tree causes that service's detail information to appear in tree form in the (lower) Service Pane.

    searchregistry

Procedure To set advanced organization search criteria:

  1. Leave the keyword text box blank.

  2. Click the Advanced Search button (shaped like binoculars).

    The Organization Discovery Criteria dialog displays.

    SetBrowsingCriteriaBusinees

  3. Select one of the search-criteria options:

  4. Select search and sort options:

  5. Under Profiles, select the registry or registries to search from the list. Those you specified in the Profiles dialog for automatic searching are already selected. To override the search list, select one or all of the registries in the list. To return to the original (default) registries, click Reset.

  6. Click OK.

    The search begins.

 
Top of section

Searching by service

You search by service in the Service Pane.

Procedure To search services by name or keyword:

  1. Enter a complete or partial service name or keyword in the text box below Service.

    TIP:   You can also enter a group of service names separated by a vertical bar, which allows you to search for multiple groups of services.

  2. Click the Search button (shaped like a downturned arrow).

    While the search is under way, the Stop button (normally grayed out) is red. The search can take several minutes. To interrupt the search, click the Stop button; partial search results display in the Service Pane.

    A list of matching services appears in tree-view form. Each top-level node in the tree is the registry that was searched; each immediate child of a registry is a service name; and children of the service node(s) contain detail information consisting of the organization name associated with the service, a description of the service, and bindings for the service.

    Clicking a service node in the (lower) Service tree causes that organization's detail information to appear in tree form in the (upper) Organization Pane.

Procedure To set advanced service search criteria:

  1. Leave the keyword text box blank.

  2. Click the Advanced Search button (shaped like binoculars).

    The Service Discovery Criteria dialog displays.

    BrowsingCriteriaService

  3. Select one of the search-criteria options:

  4. Select search and sort options:

  5. Under Profiles, select the registry or registries to search from the list. Those you specified in the Profiles dialog for automatic searching are already selected. To override the search list, select one or all of the registries in the list. To return to the original (default) registries, click Reset.

  6. Click OK.

    The search begins.

 
Top of section

Using wildcards in searches

While searching in the Registry Manager, you can use the percent sign (%) as a wildcard symbol, meaning one or more of any character. This is especially useful when you want to search for organization or service names that contain a particular word but might not start with that word.

The default search logic is Start With. So a search on Books will turn up BooksRUs but not ABC Booksellers or Used Books. The way to override this behavior is to search instead on %Books%, which will turn up all three.

You can also use the | (pipe) symbol as a logical OR to look for hits that contain any combination of specified words. You can chain together any number of keywords this way. For example:

  %Booking% | %Travel% | %Airline%

returns all names that contain at least one of these words, no matter where in the name that word appears.

 
Top of page

Retrieving WSDL from the registry

After you have found the service you searched for, you can retrieve the WSDL definition for this service from the registry. For this you use the Service Pane.

Procedure To retrieve a WSDL definition from the registry:

  1. Highlight the service node.

  2. Click the Retrieve WSDL button in the Service Pane.

    RetrieveWSDLicon

    If a definition for the service exists, the WSDL Editor displays the WSDL information.

    RetrieveWSDLFile

For more information    For information about the WSDL Editor, including different ways to view the WSDL, see WSDL Editor.

 
Top of page

Publishing to a registry

When you have created a WSDL document, you can publish it to a registry via the WSDL Editor.

For more information    For information about the WSDL Editor, see WSDL Editor.

Procedure To publish WSDL to a registry:

  1. Open the WSDL document in the WSDL Editor.

  2. Click the Publish to Registry button on the toolbar.

    Posttoregistry

    The WSDL Publishing Options dialog displays.

    WSDLPublishing Options

  3. Specify these options:

  4. Click OK.

    If your service is successfully published, you see a confirmation dialog. Otherwise, you see a dialog describing the error.

If you want to publish an organization to a registry, you can do that from the Organization Pane of the Registry Manager.

Procedure To publish an organization to a registry:

  1. Go to the Registry Manager.

  2. Click the Publish Organization button in the Organization Pane.

    UDDIPubOrg

    The Publish Organization dialog displays.

    UDDIPubOrgDlg

  3. Specify these options:

  4. Click OK.

    If your organization is successfully published, you see a confirmation dialog. Otherwise, you see a dialog describing the error.



Copyright © 2004 Novell, Inc. All rights reserved. Copyright © 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 SilverStream Software, LLC. All rights reserved.  more ...