WSO2 announced the debut of the WSO2 Registry, the industry’s first registry to combine service-oriented architecture (SOA) governance with Web 2.0 collaboration. The open source WSO2 Registry features a structured registry and repository; Web-based interface; and Web 2.0 community features such as tags, rating and comments. Together, these capabilities enable users to store, catalog, index and manage enterprise metadata in a simple, scalable and easy-to-use wiki-style model—making the WSO2 Registry equally accessible for business users, developers and administrators.

Using the highly flexible WSO2 Registry, users can store resources in a structured repository that offers built-in support for common XML and SOA metadata formats, as well as arbitrary data, such as Microsoft Office documents, images, files, and text formats. Users can easily build a catalog of enterprise information ranging from services and service descriptions to employee data and ongoing projects. The Web 2.0 features in the WSO2 Registry allow authorized users to comment on and rate resources, as well as see comments, tags, and rankings from the community.

“The ability to bring together SOA governance with Web 2.0 community features is central to enabling the social enterprise in which business and technical users work in concert, and IT is driven by the people who understand their needs best,” said Sanjiva Weerawarana, CEO of WSO2. “The Web 2.0-enabled WSO2 Registry extends our commitment to providing an open source SOA platform that puts the social enterprise within the reach of organizations seeking agility through closer collaboration.”

The WSO2 Registry supports several usage scenarios. First, it can be embedded in any Java application that needs a registry and repository to store resources with Web 2.0-style features for commenting, tagging and rating those resources. Second, it offers a REST-style Web API that allows the WSO2 Registry to be used remotely from any application from any language, including Java, PHP, C++, and Javascript. The Web API is built on the popular Atom and AtomPub protocols, allowing any feed reader (such as Google Reader or Bloglines reader) to browse the contents of the Registry. Finally, the WSO2 Registry comes with an attractive AJAX-powered user interface, which allows it to be used as a Web application by both business and technical users alike. The product can be used with the embedded database or be configured to use an existing database such as MySQL, Oracle or SQLServer.

“Embracing SOA governance can have a profound change on organizations, improving automation across cultures, organizations, and process boundaries. SOA governance begins to take on the role of a larger management benefit that can coordinate and bind line of business managers, developers, architects, and knowledgeable workers,” said Dana Gardner, founder of IT research firm Interarbor Solutions, and author of Dana Gardner’s BriefingsDirect blog on ZDNet.com. “By bringing together SOA governance functionality and Web 2.0 community features in the new WSO2 Registry, organizations can accelerate their ability to promote coordinated organizational change, optimize and extend process innovation, and automate and control 'social enterprise' activities.”

As with other WSO2 products, the WSO2 Registry is fully open source and released under the Apache License 2.0. Other key features include:

• Single model of dependency chains helps organizations to understand the implications of changing a service or schema and the interconnections between resources in the SOA.
• Deployment options: The WSO2 Registry can be either embedded or deployed in any standard Java Servlet Container (e.g. Tomcat, JBoss, etc.).
• Robust, configurable security includes the ability to fit in with an existing directory using LDAP or Acegi, or manage users internally. Fine-grained access control is provided for resources and actions.
• Resource/collection versioning lets users browse previous versions of resources or collections, as well as restore any resource/collection to its previous version.
• Links to workflow systems or Web applications for integration into existing governance and management processes are made possible through the open interfaces and model of the WSO2 Registry.
• Searchable audit logs exist for all activity in the Registry.
• Extension points allow custom properties and handlers for particular URLs or media types.
• WSO2 Registry Java client API is ultra light and highly configurable to enable easy integration with code that does not already use HTTP to obtain configuration or other metadata.
• Flexible and powerful search options include the ability to search based on tags or advanced criteria.