Chapter 5   Standard Services


Services provide actions in decision making process. Each service is a plug in component to the iPlanet Trustbase Transaction Manager's framework providing an implementation of the iPlanet Trustbase Transaction Manager's Service interface (See Installation and Configuration Guide for more details.

iPlanet Trustbase Transaction Manager is designed to run on a variety of platforms, in particular application servers. These provide a solution with the ability to service a large number of users at any single point in time. This is achieved by replicating the components i.e. running classes over a number of Java Virtual or physical machines. The iPlanet Trustbase Transaction Manager's Framework has been designed to fulfil all of these requirements. Each of the major sub-systems is capable of being replicated a number of times over a number of physical machines, but to achieve high volume processing the iPlanet Trustbase Transaction Manager's Framework imposes a number of constraints on a service.

Overview

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A service should be:

• Stateless - Each component should be capable of processing a message irrespective of the context of the message

• Granular - Each component must perform a limited number of tasks, reducing the risk of a single point of failure

Figure 5-1    Component replication

A service is directly related to the processing of a message and must be stateless to allow replication.

These services usually fall into one of three major categories:

• Authentication and Authorisation

• Business processing including integration into existing systems

• User interaction

In dividing the function into discreet services that service one of these areas a variety of applications may be built over the same common infrastructure.

In particular, a common set of authentication and authorisation services will be used across the enterprise so devising services that only perform one or both of these tasks reduces the work required for each application.