In this section, we will focus on approval process from the administrator's point of view. We assume you are familiar with basic principles of approval process described in the User's Guide, Approval Process in BEA AquaLogic Service Registry.

Approval process includes two types of registries: a publication registry and a discovery registry . The publication registry is used for testing and verification of the accuracy of data. Users publish data to the publication registry. The discovery registry houses approved data. It has no publishing API, but supports other BEA AquaLogic Service Registry APIs including inquiry, subscriptions, accounts, and so on. (In actual fact, the administrator can publish data to the discovery registry, but this is an exception.)

	Note
	Both publication and discovery registries must be running so that user accounts may be synchronized. When the discovery registry is down, it is not possible to register a new user account on the publication registry.

The accounts on publication and discovery registry are nearly the same. Accounts created on the publication registry and also all their changes are replicated to the discovery registry. But accounts can exist on the discovery registry that do not exist on publishing registry. The discovery registry contains right read-only data and can therefore be accessible for more users. It is possible to create accounts with inquiry and subscription privileges on the discovery registry that do not exist on the publishing registry. Note again that there is no Publish API on the discovery registry (except for administrator); the only way to publish data to the discovery registry is via the approval process.

Put another way: all accounts on the publication registry exist on the discovery registry, but not all accounts on discovery registry exist on publication registry.

When promotion is requested, automatic context checking is performed to ensure the consistency of data. For example, if a business service is contained in the keys for saving in the approval request and its business entity is missing on both the discovery registry and in the request, then the request for approval fails. The automatic context checker checks the integrity of data. If an entity is contained in keys for saving, then the parent entity must already exist on the discovery registry or be contained in keys for saving to the discovery registry. For detailed information, please see User's Guide, Context Checking.