Standardization

The parts of a service, such as data types and operations, should be standardized to ensure greater compatibility with all the components of a business process. Without standardization, it may be necessary to map the data structures of consumers and providers.

The Enterprise Services Repository offers predefined standardized data types, interfaces, and behaviors.

Reuse

You should aim to maximize the reuse of data types and operations. For example, the same message type can be reused in multiple interfaces, and a consumer application can reuse the same data type for calls both to read and to change data. Processes that share stable subprocesses and artefacts are easier to adapt later on, because only individual subprocesses need to be changed, rather than the entire process.

To support greater reuse, language-independent service proxies are generated and implemented in the provider system.

Discovery

It should be possible to find services using their business contexts. Consumers should not need to know the name of a specific service to find it.

For this reason, it is recommended that you publish services and their deployment information to the UDDI-compliant Services Registry. The Services Registry provides comprehensive means to discover services, which in turn supports the efficient reuse of services.