Discovery Service

The Discovery Service is a framework for describing and discovering identity web services. It allows a requesting entity, such as a service provider, to dynamically determine a principal's registered web services provider (WSP), such as an attribute provider. Typically, a service provider queries the Discovery Service, which responds by providing a resource offering that describes the requested WSP. (A resource offering defines associations between a piece of identity data and the service instance that provides access to the data.) The implementation of the Discovery Service includes Java and web-based interfaces. The service is bootstrapped using Liberty ID-FF single sign-on or the Liberty ID-WSF Authentication Web Service. For more information, see Chapter 8, Discovery Service.

By definition, a discoverable service is assigned a service type URI, allowing the service to be registered in Discovery Service instances. The service type URI is typically defined in the Web Service Definition Language (WSDL) file that defines the service.