XML Collaborator: Architecture

The XML Collaborator platform consists of a core metadata tracking database and a series of XML Web service interfaces to that information. The engine also provides a set of shared registry services that allow XML Collaborator servers registered with one another to share information and reuse components across the Distributed Registry Bus.

The services provided to the user interface include:

Administrative services: These services allow administrative tasks to be performed, such as adding users, groups, and roles, assigning permissions, and so on.

Edit services: These services allow specific structures within the database to be created or modified by users with the appropriate permissions.

Browse services: These services allow users to search the database across the entire XML Collaborator network to discover specific data elements, structures, or interfaces that have particular metadata associated with them.

Render services: These services allow the creation of specific outputs from the structures stored in the database. These include XML
Schemas, DTDs, HTML documentation, database creation scripts, and even parser code for various platforms that can parse and create documents based on the defined XML structures.

Registry services: These services allow the structures and interfaces that have been promoted to the release level by the stakeholders in the design process to be exposed to a larger audience. Again, these structures can be used to create various outputs, depending on the needs of the organization wishing to use the structures in the registry.

XML Collaborator ships with a browser-based client that uses the Web service interfaces to interact with the registry. However, the service descriptions for the engine Web services are published—so other systems can be built that take advantage of the XML Collaborator engine infrastructure. It is also possible for programmers to interact with an XML Collaborator engine directly through the Web services, allowing more sophisticated behavior such as interfaceless interaction with the repository to be easily implemented.