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Reusable Component Services (RCS)

How RCS Supports


How does RCS Support Service Oriented Architecture?

RCS provides:

  • Registration services and discovery services for business services, data services  and technology services, including web services
  • Registration and repository services for service orchestrations (e.g., BPEL scripts)
  • Composition of services through the use of relationships
  • Linking of services to related systems, applications, data sets, etc.
  • A repository for service-level agreements
  • A place to store and register policies and rules
  • A related tool that implements an Enterprise Service Bus, mediators, agents and other SOA tools


How does RCS contribute to Enterprise Architecture?

The RCS contributions include:

  • Registration of assets of many types, among them, systems and applications, XML schema, web services and many other.
  • Support of standards through sharing and reuse of components
  • Classification schemes (i.e., taxonomies) that include EPA’s Business Reference Model and EPA’s Service Reference Model
  • Metadata, specific for each type of asset, attached to every component
  • Relationships between related assets. Relationship types are parent-child, part-of, etc.
  • Documentation for all components and services
  • Repository for system administration and user manuals
  • Search and discovery mechanisms for all types of assets, regardless of their location
     


How does RCS help with Business Architecture, specifically?

In addition to supporting Enterprise Architecture as a whole, RCS contributes to business architecture:

  • Supporting discovery of systems and applications stored in READ, and the relationships of those applications to services and components
  • Providing a registry for business processes and business rules
  • Registering business services
  • Possibly implementing a business rule repository in the future


How does RCS help with Data Architecture?

In addition to supporting Enterprise Architecture as a whole, RCS contributes to data architecture:

  • Storing metadata about all kinds (tables, databases, XML databases, data warehouses, etc.) of data sets
  • Linking data sets to data element definitions and data dictionaries stored in the Data Registry
  • Linking data sets and data elements to value lists and code sets
  • Providing a future registry/repository for data models
    • Conceptual (Federal and EPA)
    • System logical and physical
    • Semantic ontology models
  • Relationships between data and the services that operate on the data


How does RCS help with Technology Architecture?

This is supported by:

  • Registration and linking of systems, applications, software tools, data sets, etc.
  • Registration and linking of systems and system modules
  • Registration and linking of collaborative tools like wikis  and other collaboration tools


How does RCS help with Application Development?

The main goal of RCS is to support application development that results in software

  • Of higher quality
  • Reduced development time
  • Higher quality
  • Lower cost

To help the development process, RCS provides a place to register and relate many types of components and services that are the pieces used by developers to build systems and applications. Those pieces include:

  • Services and components
  • Data sets and their metadata, including data structure, data element definitions, value lists, data dictionaries and data models
  • a place to register documentation, user manuals, system administration manuals, best practices and others.
  • Search and discovery mechanisms to find and use the components

Architectural standards and guidelines to use as blueprints for application development



How does RCS help the Exchange Network?

RCS can support the EN, the states and the tribes, by

  • Making services and components available for application development
  • Registering data flows, their schema and services
  • Supporting data flow development
  • Supporting an schema report card and other tools
  • Providing a schema development tool in the future
  • Providing a collaboration place for sharing documents, discussions, plans, lessons learned and best practices

The similarity of applications required by the states and tribes for their own systems and for reporting to the federal government provides a unique opportunity for sharing. The magnitude of the savings in time and money as well as the increase in quality is specially large.