Discovery Service Architecture

Java applications use the client API (discussed in Client APIs in com.sun.identity.liberty.ws.disco) to form requests sent to the Discovery Service and to parse the responses received back from it. Requests are initially received by a SOAP receiver which constructs the SOAP message that incorporates the client request.

The SOAP Binding Service defines how to send and receive messages using SOAP, an XML-based messaging protocol. The SOAP receiver is a servlet that constructs the message using these definitions. For more information, see Chapter 9, SOAP Binding Service.

The SOAP message is then routed to the Discovery Service which parses the resource identifier from it. This identifier is used to find a matching user distinguished name (DN). The necessary information is then culled from the corresponding profile, a response is generated, and the response is sent back to the SOAP receiver. The SOAP receiver then sends the response back to the client. The following figure illustrates this architecture. The Discovery Service Process has more information on how the Discovery Service works.

Figure 8–1 Discovery Service Architecture