All information about your adaptive services is stored as platform independent composition models in the composition repository, an open XML-based repository that implements a number of key OMG standards:

• OMG Common Warehouse Metamodel (CWM) – A specification that describes metadata interchange among data warehousing, business intelligence, knowledge management and portal technologies.
• OMG Meta-Object Facility (MOF) – Bridges the gap between dissimilar meta-models by providing a common basis for meta-models. If two different meta-models are both MOF-conformant, then models based on them can reside in the same repository.
• OMG XML Metadata Interchange Format (XMI) – Enables easy interchange of metadata between modeling tools (based on the OMG UML) and between tools and metadata repositories (OMG MOF-based) in distributed heterogeneous environments.

The composition repository extends OMG MOF with additional functionality to support versioning and update rights management right down to the element level. By supporting this functionality at the repository level it does not have to be implemented separately in all of the tools that work around the repository.

For ease of change management and project administration a series of physical component repositories are created, one per composition model. The physical representation of the composition repository is an XML document stored in a standard ASCII file in the native Microsoft Windows file system.

SCORE Adaptive Bridges provides a comprehensive set of reporting and analysis tools that use XSLT style sheets to create HTML reports. To meet your specific needs these XSLT style sheets are easily updated or replaced. If necessary the underlying XML document can also be directly used by any of the wide range of third party reporting tools that can process XML documents.

Relationships and dependencies between models are maintained directly by the repository and not by the separate tools. This approach dramatically improves consistency as it is not possible to bypass the integrity layer irrespective of which tool or utility is being used to load or update the composition repository.

Any attempt to make changes directly in the physical XML document underlying the composition repository are detected using a checksum calculated across the complete XML document. Such a modified XML document is rejected by the composition repository and cannot be further used within SCORE Adaptive Bridges.

An increasingly wide range of third party tools and utilities are becoming available that work with CWM, MOF and XMI. By implementing these important OMG repository standards SCORE Adaptive Bridges provides an open solution to storing and working with your composition models.

Where to Go Next?

The next section introduces you to the Composition Manager, the main tool within SCORE Adaptive Bridges that you use to discover, compose and produce adaptive services.