Assertions are characteristics that describe the capabilities of
an endpoint.
You can define these capabilities along five dimensions: Performance, Reliability,
Interoperability, Security, and Manageability.
You have the ability to extend the Industry Ontology to add assertions
that are custom to their Enterprise IT environment.
At runtime, the IBM® Business Services Dynamic Assembler uses these characteristics
to find the best suited endpoint or service realization for a consumer based
on their business requirements. In our meta model, these business requirements
are called Policies.
- Assertions can be attached to endpoints to specify a particular characteristic
of an endpoint. For example Maximum Transaction time available.
- Assertions are also used in policy contract. During runtime if a policy
is applicable then contract is applied. When the policy is fired the contract
is applied. When the policy Target, Context, and Content conditions are satisfied,
the contract is enforced.
- Assertions on a policy can either be used for endpoint selection during
runtime or other non-endpoint selection purposes like transformation assertion,
data format assertion etc.
Note: - Assertions that are not endpoint selection should be used only in policy
contract and not in an endpoint.
- `Hours of operation' assertion should be used only in endpoint and not
in policy contract.
- Duplicate Allowed: Some assertions are marked as duplicate allowed which
indicate that the user can add more than one assertion of that type to a single
policy or a single endpoint. For example: WSI-Profile assertion.