Service discovery and publication
View Patent ↗A system and methods for service discovery and publication are disclosed. Application programs write requests for service discovery, publication, and subscription to a service discovery application programming interface. The service discovery application programming interface invokes one or more lower-level protocols to satisfy the discovery, publication and/or subscription request. Service information retrieved from lower-layer protocols is formatted into a consistent data model and returned to the client application. In addition, service information may be stored in a persistent data store managed by a discovery persistence service communicatively connected to the service discovery API.
1. A method for discovering services available in a computing environment, comprising:
in an application program executed on a computer:
defining a discovery scope identifying a searchable query domain;
defining a discovery filter comprising a simple filter and a rich filter, wherein the simple filter provides for expression of the searchable query domain by service type, service interface and/or service characteristics and the rich filter provides for expression of the searchable query domain using query semantics; and
initiating a search request to a first application programming interface;
in the first application programming interface:
parsing the search request;
retrieving service information corresponding to the requested discovery scope and discovery filter, wherein retrieving service information corresponding to the requested discovery score and discovery filter comprises querying a persistent data store service; and
returning the service information to the application program.
2. The method of claim 1 , wherein retrieving service information corresponding to the requested discovery scope and discovery filter comprises executing a call to at least one low-level API or protocol.
3. The method of claim 1 , wherein retrieving service information corresponding to the requested discovery scope and discovery filter comprises querying a persistent data store service.
4. The method of claim 1 , further comprising formatting retrieved service information into a consistent service entry object data format.
5. The method of claim 2 , further comprising saving information received from the at least one low-level API or protocol in a persistent data store.
6. A method of subscribing to service events in a computing environment, comprising:
in an application program executed on a computer:
defining a scope identify in a searchable query domain;
defining a filter comprising a simple filter and a rich filter, wherein the simple filter provides for expression of the searchable query domain by service type, service interface and/or service characteristics and the rich filter provides for expression of the searchable query domain using query semantics;
defining a callback function; and
initiating a subscription request to a first application programming interface;
in the first application programming interface:
parsing the search request;
executing at least one low-level API call to subscribe to service events;
returning information from service events to the application program.
7. The method of claim 6 , further comprising formatting retrieved service information into a service entry object data format.
8. The method of claim 7 , further comprising saving information received from the at least one low-level API in a persistent data store.