Central Repository for Service Contract Enforcement
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Solution Overview
Problem
In a service-oriented architecture, information associated with a service during the development stage may become disconnected from the service during the testing and production stages, leading to runtime policies and service-level objectives not being properly applied.
Innovation Solution
A central repository is used to store and manage information such as contracts and runtime policies, which are automatically applied across different stages of the service lifecycle, with Policy Enforcement Points (PEPs) ensuring compliance with service-level objectives during service execution.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If services are provided through service providers and service consumers in a service-oriented architecture, then service reuse and flexibility are improved, but information associated with services during development stage becomes disconnected from testing and production stages, leading to loss of policy information
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements a universal service registry that serves multiple functions across different service lifecycle stages (development, testing, production). The registry stores service information, contracts, and runtime policies in a unified manner that can be accessed and applied across all stages, preventing information loss while maintaining service flexibility and reusability.
2Reliability
If runtime policies and service-level objectives are defined during development stage, then service quality control is improved, but these policies are not properly applied during testing and production stages
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements a feedback mechanism where the service registry continuously provides service information and contract details to Policy Enforcement Points (PEPs) during runtime. This feedback loop ensures that policies defined during development are consistently applied during testing and production, as PEPs can retrieve and enforce the original service-level objectives and runtime policies against actual service executions.
Solution Approach 2:
The service registry acts as an intermediary between policy definition (development stage) and policy enforcement (testing and production stages). It stores contracts and service information in a standardized format that can be retrieved by PEPs, ensuring seamless transmission of policy requirements across different lifecycle stages without manual intervention or information loss.
3Stability of the object's composition
If a central repository is implemented to store contracts and runtime policies, then information consistency across service lifecycle stages is improved, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The service registry is designed as a universal, multi-functional component that handles service registration, information storage, contract management, and policy provision across all service lifecycle stages. By consolidating these functions into a single standardized registry rather than separate systems for each stage, the patent achieves information consistency without proportionally increasing overall system complexity.
Data Source
AI summary
A repository stores a contract between a service consumer and a service provider that provides a service, the contract specifying a service-level objective associated with a service to be applied for the service consumer. An enforcement device is configured according to the contract, where the configuring causes the enforcement device to perform enforcement of the service-level objective in a connection between the service consumer and the service provider, the connection allowing the service consumer to access the service in response to the enforcement device confirming that the service consumer is associated with the contract.