The WebSphere Business Services Fabric assembly process

The WebSphere Business Services Fabric product provides a synergistically governed environment that enables administrators, architects, business analysts, and developers to collaborate, assemble and deliver business services in a service-oriented architecture (SOA) system.

A very high-level view of WebSphere Business Services Fabric assembly process–including how to develop, deploy, invoke, and optimize business services–is shown in the following figure.

Figure 1. WebSphere Business Services Fabric process to develop, deploy, invoke, and optimize business services.The WebSphere Business Services Fabric assembly process
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An overview of how to set up WebSphere Business Services Fabric

To start using WebSphere Business Services Fabric, you must perform the following setup activities after the product has been installed. You cannot use WebSphere Business Services Fabric until the setup activities have been completed.

  1. Configure federated sources: Once Fabric is installed and running, an administrator must configure the system to integrate it with the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) and WebSphere Service Registry and Repository (WSRR) repositories if they are used. If your system is using only the Business Services Repository, skip this step and start with step 2.

    Performed by the administrator in the Business Services Governance Manager.

  2. Grant users access to WebSphere Business Services Fabric: To start using Fabric, an administrator must assign users to Fabric roles. After assigning users to roles, the administrator then enrolls organizations and users in the business services. Enrolled users are then accessible in the Subscriber Manager.

    Performed by the administrator in the Business Services Subscriber Manager > Manage Subscribers.

An overview of how to develop, deploy, invoke, and optimize business services

The WebSphere Business Services Fabric process spans end-to-end business service development activities from conceptual design to rollout to the users, such as the following typical activities :

To learn more about these activities, see the online documentation that is provided with each module.

All WebSphere Business Services Fabric modules must be installed and running before you begin this process. To develop, deploy, invoke, and optimize business services, complete the following steps:

  1. Define a Fabric project

    WebSphere Business Services Fabric activities are carried out within the scope of a project. Each project configuration is associated with metadata content and the team that maintains the content. Different types of projects can be created for different kinds of content. At the start of a development project, an administrator must create a new project business service type, assign a team to the new project, and then allocate namespaces for the instances that belong to the new project. Other types of projects are used for industry content, federated sources, and ontology extensions.

    In this step, the administrator must also assign namespaces (that is, business service metadata locations), to each Fabric project. Namespaces are categorized by the type of metadata that they store. Typically, a project has at least one Instance namespace that store instances. If the project holds subscribable business services and enrollments, then the project should have an Enrollment namespace to store enrollments and subscriptions.

    Performed by administrator role in the Business Services Governance Manager > Configure Projects business service.

  2. Configure project namespaces

    The administrator must also determine which namespaces from other projects should be visible and usable by the new Fabric projects. A project's imported namespaces enables users of that project to see and refer to metadata stored in those namespaces. As a project evolves, it might require instances from other projects. A project might also required exposure to some instances in a namespace for other projects to consume. The administrator can revisit these requirements at different stages of the project.

    Performed by administrator role in the Business Services Governance Manager > Configure Namespaces business service.

  3. Create a project in Business Services Composition Studio

    A Business Services Composition Studio user updates the project workspace to download the latest repository version into the workspace. The user then selects a project from the list of projects that are available to the user's team. Updating and selecting a project sets up the user's project environment. Once the environment is set up, the user can create metadata instances within the namespaces that are owned by the project. Instances from namespaces imported from other projects are read-only.

    After an administrator sets up a Fabric project with users and namespaces, the Fabric project team, including architects, developers, and business analysts can instantiate business service metadata such as its business services, Web services, and endpoints.

    Performed by developer and architect roles in the Business Services Composition Studio.

  4. Create, edit, test, and submit metadata

    Any changes made to business service metadata will go through the governance process for approval. After the service metadata has been instantiated for a Fabric project and its environment is set, a team member can submit the changes to the governance process for approval.

    Performed by developer and architect roles in the Business Services Composition Studio.

  5. Approve or reject metadata changes in governance

    The governance administrator reviews the business service metadata changes, approves them, and publishes them to the repository. The administrator can also reject the changes if they conflict with existing metadata.

    Performed by administrator role in the Business Services Governance Manager > Manage Changes business service.

  6. Enroll users and organizations in business services

    To complete this step, you must ensure that the application artifacts in a project are approved, that the deployment activities are complete, and that the business services defined for that project are enrollable and subscribable.

    Subsequently, an organization administrator enrolls users and organizations in business services to enable them to access (invoke) services.

    Performed in the Business Services Subscriber Manager > Manage Subscribers by various roles.

  7. Invoke a business service

    In a production environment, a business service user invokes a business service. Using the metadata of the business service, the Business Services Dynamic Assembler invokes the best available endpoint. It considers the user, the business service, the content of a request, and the policy applied to the business service; it then returns a suitable response. For example, a suitable response might be the invocation of an endpoint within the response time appropriate for a customer's level of service.

  8. Analyze and optimize business service performance

    An application administrator can access the business service performance reports and fine-tune the performance of the service.

    Performed in the Business Services Performance Manager by various roles.