How to Guide

Contents 1 Introduction 2 NCES Services Integration Lab (SIL) 3 The Use Case Scenario 4 The Goals 5 The Architecture 6 The Design 7 The Implementation 8 The Goals (revisited) 9 Additional Considerations 10 Other Use Cases 11 Reference Materials 12 Lessons-learned

Introduction

There are four common patterns that can be used to expose information resources to the DoD Enterprise using capabilities provided by the Net-Centric Enterprise Services (NCES) Program. Summarily these are:

1. If the information asset is a web site, allow it to be crawled by the NCES Google Search Appliance.
2. Create an entry in the NCES Enterprise Catalog about an existing information asset.
3. Create a custom web service to expose the data asset and register that service with the NCES Service Registry. And
4. Implement the NCES Federated Search interface such that the information resource is able to respond to queries federated by the Federated Search capability.

This tutorial will primarily focus on creating a custom web service and registering that service in the NCES Service Registry. The reason for this is that it exercises more of the NCES Capabilities and therefore provides a greater level of exposure to those capabilities. The other patterns are covered in their respective section inside Other Use Cases.

NCES Services Integration Lab (SIL)

The Services Integration Lab (SIL), available from SPAWAR Systems Center Charleston, provides an environment to assist program engineers with developing, testing, and evaluating the performance of their capabilities when integrated with NCES provided Enterprise infrastructure.

The Use Case Scenario

In this use case scenario, the problem space in which we will be working is described. Principles illustrated in this use case are applicable to a significant percentage of the challenges that DoD developers face. This scenario establishes a foundation for the remainder of the developer's guidance in the sections that follow.

The Goals

This chapter discusses the high level Data Strategy Goals as well as the requirements that are levied on a data provider, and in particular in the data provider of the weather service being developed as described in The Use Case Scenario.

The Architecture

This chapter defines the architectural approach for building the weather service and meeting requirements specified in The Goals.

The Design

This chapter discusses the low-level design and patterns utilized in developing the weather service.

The Implementation

This chapter contains a highly detailed description of how the weather service is implemented. It includes a step-by-step tutorial with sufficient detail that readers can follow to actually implement the weather service or similar use case, as well as describe and register the resultant service using the NCES product lines.

The Goals (revisited)

This chapter is a recap of the goals with a discussion of how The Architecture, The Design, and The Implementation have fulfilled requirements and objectives specified in The Goals.

Additional Considerations

This chapter discusses, at a high level, some of the additional issues that architects and developers may need to consider in developing net-centric services, e.g. distinguishing between visibility and accessibility over various networks.

Other Use Cases

This chapter discusses the following use cases for exposing information assets:

• Allowing a Web Site to be Crawled
• Registering an Entry in the NCES Enterprise Catalog
• Implementing the Federated Search Interface

Reference Materials

This chapter provides some useful links and additional developer's guidance that has been put together by various programs (including NCES), which are leveraging the NCES capabilities.

Lessons-learned

This chapter contains links to lessons learned from various Communities of Interest gathered during pilot activities focused on making data available in a net-centric manner and meeting Data Strategy objectives.

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