Patterns: Implementing Self-Service in an SOA Environment

Chapter 3. SOA and the Enterprise Service Bus 51

Modeling

The ESB should support the increasing array of cross-industry and vertical

standards in both the XML and Web services spaces. It should support custom

message and data models. The ESB should also support the use of development

tooling and be capable of identifying different models for internal and external

services and processes.

Infrastructure intelligence

The ESB should be capable of evolving towards a more autonomic,

infrastructure. It should allow business rules and policies to affect ESB function,

and it should support pattern recognition.

3.2.7 The ESB and other SOA components

The ESB is not the only infrastructure component in an SOA. Although individual

scenarios vary, other commonly occurring components are:

򐂰 Business Service Directory, which provides details of available services to

systems that participate in the SOA.

򐂰 Business Service Choreography, which is used to orchestrate sequences of

service interactions into short or long-lived business processes.

򐂰 ESB Gateway, which is used to provide a controlled point of external access

to services where the ESB does not provide this natively. Larger

organizations are likely to keep the ESB Gateway as a separate component.

An ESB Gateway can also be used to federate ESBs within an enterprise.

52 Patterns: Implementing Self-Service in an SOA Environment