Cybernetica’s Data Exchange Technologies team is pleased to announce that at the end of last year, UXP Directory 2.0 (formerly known as UXP Service Directory) was released. The product was renamed, because the focus has been shifted from services to the whole UXP installation. The aim is to provide a valuable overview of all its members, information systems, and services.
The core concept remains the same: UXP Directory downloads the global configuration from the registry server to obtain lists of members and information systems registered in UXP instance. To gather data of services that are provided in UXP instance, Directory retrieves the lists of services for each information system from its owner's security server. Moreover, if information about Directory entity (i.e., member, information system or service) has been stored once, it is preserved even if the entity is not found anymore (for example, service has been deleted from the UXP installation). In these cases, Directory displays "inactive" status for undiscovered entities.
Screenshot of member list in Greenland’s Pitu Directory environment
The user interface has been completely redesigned to be more user friendly: members, information systems, and services have been divided into separate pages. In the new version it is possible to add supplementary information to Directory entities. This can take the form of technical contact data for connected subsystem or human-readable documentation for a service. This manually added information is not managed centrally: it can be updated by the UXP members who ensure that their data is up to date.
Screenshot of member details including custom fields in Greenland’s Pitu Directory environment
Also, the new Directory provides a better visualization of SOAP services. The Directory parses WSDL service descriptions and displays the service title and description, as well as input and output parameters. This information (together with documentation) is especially useful for organizations trying to decide if an existing service satisfies their needs or a new one must be developed.
Screenshot of WSDL parameters in Greenland’s Pitu Directory environment
The new Directory is integrated with UXP Monitoring. The front page dashboard displays the most important statistics of the UXP installation. Furthermore, for each Directory entity, individual statistics dashboard is constructed to demonstrate the amount of requests that is associated with the entity and which are its top services that are provided or consumed.
Screenshot of dashboard and service statistics in Greenland’s Pitu Directory environment
Screenshot of service statistics in Greenland’s Pitu Directory environment
Cybernetica continues the active development of UXP Directory according to the needs of current and future customers. In the upcoming months, it is planned to release UXP Directory 2.1 that would bring even more tools for visualizing the data exchange in the UXP installation.