This document describes how to use the Web UI Registry Browser to query and drill down into Registry and Repository content. The Registry Browser Web UI currently provides read-only access to content. A future release will have a publish feature.
The Registry Browser Web UI is based on Java Server Faces 1.1_01 and designed to work with standard web browsers such as Mozilla, Netscape and Internet Explorer. It requires that JavaScript be supported and enabled in the browser.
This section describes what you need to do to get started using the Registry Browser Web UI browser.
First, the Registry must be installed, configured and started. See the SetupGuide.html for details. After that, no user configuration is required.
Next, start a web browser. If the Registry is installed on a local machine using default configuration, enter the following URL in your browser:
http://localhost:8080/omar/registry/thin/WelcomePage.jsp
The URL shown above is the default. 'localhost' should resolve to your local machine name, '8080' is the default port, and 'omar/registry/thin/browser.jsp' is the default URI. If the Registry is not deployed locally, or not deployed using default properties, obtain the URL from the Registry Administrator.
After that, the Registry Browser Web UI should appear in your web browser. The following sections provide more information on layout, discovery, search results and drill down features.
The Registry Browser Web UI is organized as follows - it has one main frame that contains a frameset of four additional frames:
Banner Frame - this is the top, horizontal frame with a logo, title and tool bar.
Discovery Frame - this is left side frame with links to Explore Registry and Search Registry. As the title suggests, this frame is used to discover what content is in the Registry and Repository. The content is made up of Registry Informaton Model (RIM) metadata objects.
Search Results Frame - this is the right upper frame that contains the results of a query or explore task. It contains a tabular display of RIM object search results. A subset of the RIM object's attributes is displayed as columns, and each result is displayed as rows. A drill-down can be done on each search result.
Detail Frame - this is the right lower frame that contains the results of the drill-down. The result contains all the RIM object's attributes and composed objects displayed in one file tab. Other RIM objects, related to the drill down object, are also displayed in separate, sequential file folders.
See sections below for more details.
There are two ways to discover Registry content: exploring content using file folders and querying content using query forms. Each is discussed in subsections below:
In the Discovery page, click on the Explore Registry link. The Explore Registry page will load in the Discovery frame. This page allows you to navigate through Registry and Repository content using a hierarchy of file folders. The root folder, named 'registry', contains all Registry content, and is similar to the UNIX root directory.
Click on the expansion image directly left of the folder to expand the 'registry' folder. You should see a subfolder named 'userData'. This is the default folder where all user content is placed.
To review the contents of a folder, click on the folder image or the folder name. The search results will appear in the SearchResultsFrame directly to the right. You may review details of each item by clicking on the Details link located in the first column of the search results table. See the Search Result Drill Downs section below for details.
In the Discovery page, click on the Search Registry link. The Search Registry page will load in the Discovery frame. At the top of the page is a drop-down list, called 'Select ad-hoc query', that contains a list of preconfigured queries. Clicking a member of this list, causes a new query form to be loaded in the Search Registry page. Business Query query is the default query in the list, and will be used in the following description.
This form enables querying based on the RIM type, name, description and one or more classifications. It is equivalent to the Business Query contained in the Thick Client. This query is good for general querying - more specific queries can be configured for specific target audiences.
The default ObjectType is 'RegistryObject' which is the parent type of all RIM objects. Not surprisingly, executing a query with this type will return a large result set. For smaller result sets, choose a different type such as 'Service' or 'Organization'. Then, click the Search button. The search results will appear in the SearchResultsFrame in the upper right. This kind of query is not filtered in any way - all objects are returned. See below for how to filter the result set.
The Name, Description and Classifications are all used to filter the search results. For example, select 'Service' from the ObjectType list box, enter '%ebXML%' into the Name field, and click the Search button. You should see one search result:
|
Details |
ObjectType |
Name |
Description |
Version |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Details |
Service |
ebXML Registry Service |
Sun's OASIS ebXML Registry V3.0 service |
|
The '%' is used as the wildcard character.
The search results from a query are displayed in the SearchResultsFrame in the upper right. They are displayed in a tabular format - RIM object attributes are displayed as table columns, each RIM object is displayed as table rows.
The columns displayed to the user can be configured for each RIM object. For example, Service objects can display five attributes, Extrinsic Objects display four attributes and so on. See the Registry Browser Web UI Configuration Guide for details.
If there are more rows in the result set than the Registry Browser Web UI can display, the scroller at the bottom of the Search Results page can be used to navigate forward and backward through the set.
Each row in the search results contains a Details column with a link to the Details page. Click on any of the links to see an object's details.
The search result table contains links to a Details page for any RIM object. Execute a query as explained previously. Click on the Details link. The Details page displays in the DetailFrame in the lower right. Scroll down the page to see all the object's attributes and composed objects. Other objects, related to the drill down object, are also displayed in adjacent tab folders. Click on any of these other tabs to see details on these related objects.
There are two kinds of relationships: references and associations. A reference is a unidirectional relationship from source to target object. An assocation is a bidirectional relationship that contains additional metadata such as what kind of an assocation it is.
References are only supported between some pairs of object types. For example, a Service source object can have a reference to a ServiceBinding object. Assocations can be created between any two object types. If a reference is valid, the Reference option will be shown first. Users still have the option of creating an Asssocation. Click the radio button in the Relationship table to toggle between Reference and Association types.
Before you can publish, you must first register. See the User Registration Guide for more details.
To create a new registry object, perform these steps:
In order to create an Assocation, you must select two Registry objects. Usually, these are objects with different object types. One way to get a result set with two different object types, is to 'pin' the first object in the result set so that it appears in the second result set. This enables you to do a first query for one object type, such as Organization, pin the Organization object, and then do a second query for a different object type, such as Service. You can then select both these objects and create an Assocation between them.
To pin a registry object, perform these steps:
To remove the pin, click the Pin checkbox a second time, and click Clear. The pinned object should now no longer be visible.