JaxView SOA Management Solutions
The vision of service-oriented architecture using Web services
includes the promise of easier integration and reuse of otherwise
disparate IT systems. Web services technologies do introduce
challenges of their own for IT operations. Two categories of SOA
challenges are performance monitoring and policy enforcement.
Web service technology development teams generally have an array
of tools for building and validating the design of service-oriented
systems. However, Operations has few choices for tools that can
provide real-time view of the performance of the systems. For small
to medium sized organizations, there may also be a need for
additional middleware functions to integrate service systems with
disparate message policies. These organizations may also have need
for consumer authentication functions.
As a versatile and flexible management solution, JaxView provides
a rich set of solution options for monitoring Web service performance
and enforcing policies in the SOA environment. This section provides
a summary overview of several of the many functions that JaxView can
provide for SOA operational management. Use the links in the sections
below to view more detailed information and the steps you use to
implement these solutions.
With the growth of Web-based systems for business and government,
a number of tools were developed for testing the availability and
performance of these systems. For HTTP based systems, it was often
sufficient to send a request to a server and look at the response
code provided by the target Web server. Web services use XML-based
messages to exchange information. They also require specific message
formats and content. This compounds the challenges faced by
operations to monitor the availability and performance of Web
services in the service-oriented environments. JaxView gives
operations and development teams an easily deployed tool for
monitoring Web service performance. See the section SOA
Performance Monitoring with JaxView for more information and an
overview of the steps to setup performance monitoring in JaxView.
- Monitoring Web Service Performance
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JaxView provides a rich set of Web service monitoring capabilities
to meter and report on service usage rates, response times, fault
rates, and message sizes. Message content and fault messages can
also be monitored for specific patterns.
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Monitoring Web Service Transactions
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The loosely-coupled nature of Web services presents challenges for
developing services that rely on a sequence of service requests.
Once these systems are deployed, JaxView provides capabilities for
metering and verifying transactions. JaxView supports a variety of
techniques used for monitoring and reporting on transactions.
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Active Monitoring of Web Service Availability
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JaxView includes active monitor types that send requests to a Web
service producer to ensure that the service is available. The
JaxView SOAP Heartbeat monitor type provides an important
operational tool that complements conventional HTTP URL monitoring
available with other monitoring solutions. Active monitors can be
configured to test the target service at regular intervals.
Policy enforcement includes implementation of access controls as
well as enforcement of service message content rules. See the section
SOA Policy Enforcement with JaxView
for more information.
- Client Authentication Enforcement
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Using JaxView as a services gateway or proxy provides a means to
authenticate Web service consumers. This is useful for small to
medium sized organization where the service architecture may not
have an existing authentication functionality
- Message Encryption Enforcement
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JaxView can provide XML message decryption and encryption
when deployed as a services gateway. This is useful where the
service producer implementation may not
have support encryption of XML service messages
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Service Message Modification
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As companies develop and deploy Web services, there may be
situations in which it is necessary to modify request and response
message content. When deployed as a gateway or proxy, JaxView can
perform middleware functions to integrate otherwise disparate
systems. JaxView includes policy options for modifying request or
response message content.
- Service Level Governance
- The transition to SOA infrastructure usually does not eliminate commitments
to service levels. In addition to enforcement of access policies, JaxView
includes tools for monitoring and reporting on service availability and usage.
It can even be used to enforce service usage limits.