Discovery Service Architecture

Remote Java applications use the Client SDK to form requests sent to the Discovery Service and to parse the responses received back from it. Requests are initially received by the SOAPReceiver, a servlet 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. For more information, see SOAP Binding Service in Sun OpenSSO Enterprise 8.0 Administration Guide.

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 returned to the SOAPReceiver which sends the response back to the client. Figure 12–7 illustrates this architecture.

Figure 12–7 Discovery Service Architecture