Dependency Discovery Overview

Dependency mapping provides a flexible method of discovering relationships between deployable components or running software. This method allows the use of user-defined dependency mapping rules (using simple programming syntax), which the Universal Discovery process uses to automatically discover dependencies.

A service can be either a business or IT service. A business service is a service that a business provides to another business (B2B) or that one organization provides to another within a business (such as payment processing). An IT service is a business service that an IT organization provides to support business services or IT's own operations.

A deployable component is a software component that is deployed within running software, such as an application server or web server. Examples of deployable components are JEE EAR components or a schema within an Oracle database. For the purpose of dependency discovery, running software is considered to be a deployable component.

A provider deployable component delivers a service, and declares how other deployable components can consume that service. A consumer deployable component "consumes" a service provided by a provider deployable component. The dependency between these deployable components is a consumer-provider dependency.

For more information, see the following sections:

• Providers and Consumers
• Service Connection Point
• Configuration Signatures
• Dependency Mapping Flow