"There is no question that a repository is a key enabler for SOA, and the Flashline repository will serve as the basis for providing a more unified environment for SOA," said Rob Levy, executive vice president and chief technology officer, BEA Systems, as BEA announced yesterday that it had acquired Flashline, Inc., an industry leader in the metadata repository market.

"Flashline's repository will be a key component of the AquaLogic product family enabling tracking, governing and managing liquid assets in a common repository for sharing across multiple projects and measuring the resulting business value," Levy noted. 

The Flashline repository will become BEA AquaLogic Enterprise Repository, he said, and fulfill a strategic role as a critical component for providing a more unified environment for SOA.

"We continue to execute against the SOA vision we outlined one year ago, and remain focused on generating growth through a combination of enhancements that further our product roadmap and business objectives," Levy added.

The metadata repository is often cited as a critical component of SOA, providing a shared location to manage metadata, govern the asset lifecycle, and measure results. With growth in the SOA/Web services market, enterprises are increasingly looking toward repositories to provide visibility into their asset portfolios and optimize reuse.

Flashline, based in Cleveland, Ohio, was founded in 1998. Customers include Countrywide Home Loans, Sabre Holdings and Wells Fargo. Flashline's repository was first released in 2001 and is an award-winning metadata repository that provides enterprise-wide visibility into an organization's software assets to help reduce IT costs and improve business agility. Using Flashline's tracking and analytics, customers have demonstrated savings through reuse, aligned assets with architecture and business objectives, and improved governance of their IT programs such as SOA, enterprise architecture and software reuse. Flashline's employees, including founder and CEO Charles Stack, will remain in Cleveland and join the BEA AquaLogic business group.

The enterprise metadata repository capabilities of Flashline together with the industry leading UDDI service registry, BEA AquaLogic(TM) Service Registry, provide a complete metadata management solution. It gives BEA customers the capability to manage and govern the full SOA lifecycle, from planning and design through runtime and maintenance.