To suit different business needs, any SOA based development and governance process requires customization of SOA entities. Such customization ranges from adding organization-specific information to defining new types of artifacts.

The ES Repository allows you to create your own SOA entity types, if the existing ones do not suit your needs. The entity types that you define are called Custom Entities. The metadata that describes an entity type is called its custom entity definition.

Other than creating new entity types, the ES Repository also allows you to extend the existing SOA entity types to accommodate additional data. For example, an architect would like to associate an additional attribute, say response time, to a service interface. Or, during the development process, details of the person responsible and the due date needs to be appended to a service interface. This additional data that you define is called an attribute. The attributes that you define to extend the entity types modeled in ES Repository are called Custom Attributes. The metadata that describes an attribute is called its attribute definition.

Workflow

For example, an enterprise architect identifies the additional attributes required for a SOA entity-type. This architect then defines these attribute definitions in the SAP NetWeaver Developer Studio. The attribute definitions can be defined for all interface objects such as service interface, data types, message types, and so on. Once the enterprise architect defines the attribute definitions, the developers can assign values to these attributes in the interface objects. The values that the developer assigns to an attribute definition is called a Custom Attribute.

Configuration

In the ES Repository, all attribute and entity definitions are stored under one software component version. To create attribute or entity definitions under a software component version, you need to configure the aii property com.sap.aii.ibrep.server.mme.swcv. The value of this aii property is set to the ID of the software component version under which you create attribute definitions.

For more information on the list of limitations on custom entities and entity definitions, refer to SAP note 1567786.