governance

Keeping your design-oriented activities inline with the deployed realities of composite applications can be very difficult. Over time, the runtime environment may gradually diverge from the expectations built into the designs. The challenge, then, is to continually synchronize in both directions—update runtime resources with design resources while feeding data about the runtime environment back into design tools. Such bi-directional communication facilitates transparency, while providing information and metrics that aid decision-making about the management of the system as a whole.

AmberPoint Management System bridges the gap between design-time governance tools and runtime management by integrating with any UDDI v3 compliant registry or repository. It exchanges design-time metadata and runtime information bi-directionally with repositories.

AmberPoint automatically synchronizes services metadata recorded in a registry—as well as the policies associated with those services—with the actual runtime state of your composite application. This exchange of information helps to resolve discrepancies between design/development intentions and runtime realities. For instance, it identifies rogue services and submits them for approval. Ad hoc management policies are brought to the notice of system owners. Administrators can also ensure that consumers access only managed service endpoints—endpoints that have been authorized for use.

AmberPoint capabilities

Service Metadata
AmberPoint automatically discovers services recorded in the registry as well as adding to the registry any new, previously unlisted (or "rogue") services discovered in the running environment.

• Synchronizes service metadata between runtime and design time
• Updates changes to service endpoints made in the running environment
• Submits synchronized information (services, endpoints and policies) to the registry/repository’s approval process

Synchronizing Policy
AmberPoint retrieves policies referenced in registries and enforces them at runtime. It also:

• Publishes policies to registries
• Continuously provisions policies based on metadata-driven criteria
• Ensures policies are enforced according to policy assignment rules described in the registry
• Fosters closed-loop control over the delivery and lifecycle of distributed applications

Runtime Metrics and Service Scorecards
AmberPoint updates the registry/repository with current runtime status information, enabling users to get a summary view of the system.

• Enriches registries by publishing Service Scorecards containing throughput, availability, response times, faults, service level agreement violations and exceptions
• Shares performance data across designated intervals (last day, last week, last month, etc.)
• Publishes service-to-consumer dependencies to the registry, facilitating impact analysis based on actual runtime usage