News

LogicLibrary Adds SOA Management Features

• By Linda L. Briggs
• June 20, 2005

Beginning to incorporate a service-oriented architecture into the enterprise sounds great, but managing the associated services, interfaces and metadata is a critical element. SOA management products, such as those for metadata management, are thus becoming more and more important.

“The whole metadata management area is really getting hot,” according to Ron Schmelzer with ZapThink, an analyst firm that focuses on issues around XML, Web services and service orientation. “It’s actually very difficult, if not impossible, to build a service-oriented architecture with reusable services if you don’t have a registry.”

LogicLibrary is well positioned to take advantage of the need for better SOA management tools; the company provides software and services to help enterprises manage and reuse all sorts of software development assets. Such assets can include software code, models, database schema and policies. “These are things you don’t want to develop twice if you don’t have to,” Schmelzer says.

For example, LogicLibrary recently added a governance function called SmartControl to help organizations manage reusable components, Web services and other SOA assets. With governance abilities, companies can create policies to guide how developers build and maintain reusable components—a critical part of managing a service-oriented architecture.

In order for SOAs to function properly, services must be implemented correctly, support security policies and maintain consistency with the company’s business architecture. Products such as SmartControl help make that possible by allowing organizations to set up their own specific governance processes for the production, distribution and consumption of services.

Also, with its recent integration with Borland’s JBuilder IDE, LogicLibrary’s Logicdex metadata repository now integrates with most major development environments, including Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, Eclipse, IBM WebSphere Studio, IBM Rational Application Developer, Software Modeler and Software Architect, and SAP NetWeaver Studio.

The JBuilder add-in means that developers can launch Logidex directly from Borland’s IDE, using Logidex capabilities while remaining in the environment they’re most comfortable with.

LogicLibrary has expanded from the asset management space it traditionally occupied, according to Schmelzer. In offering metadata registry and repository products, the company is staking out an important area of SOA.