Service discovery

From AMWA

Discovery relates to the process of identifying which available service is appropriate for performing a particular business activity, and to the collection of information necessary to interact with the service identified (e.g. the service endpoint).

Different tools and mechanisms can be applied to service discovery, including registries/repositories (see service registry), ESBs (see Enterprise Service Bus), notification broadcast, etc.

Service discovery can be performed either at design time, by the SOA system designer, or at run-time, by the service consumer.