Building anything requires understanding the materials you have at hand. Two vendors that provide software for managing service-oriented architectures want to make that very thing possible, by providing metadata repositories for tracking SOA environments. In so doing, they hope to overcome a major barrier to SOA's wide-scale adoption.
Rivals BEA Systems and webMethods last week announced acquisitions of metadata repository applications that store information about software assets, software interdependencies, and governance policies. BEA bought Flashline and its metadata repository, while webMethods acquired nearly all the assets of Cerebra, including its metadata repository technology. Terms of the deals weren't disclosed.
A key benefit of SOAs is that they let developers reuse software components instead of forever building new applications from scratch. But that requires knowing what components are available. A lack of tools that automate the discovery and management of software components has hindered the whole concept of software reuse, says Shawn Willett, an analyst with Current Analysis.
Flashline, renamed BEA AquaLogic Enterprise Repository, becomes part of BEA's line of products for managing SOA infrastructure in heterogeneous IT environments. Cerebra's technology will serve as webMethods' federated metadata repository and is being embedded into a new release of webMethods Fabric, a business integration and process optimization software suite, due later this year.
