Planning
Interoperability Demonstration and Testing
ARCHITECTURE DEVELOPMENT

Architecture Development

The testbed is architected as a Web-based, distributed application. Figure below shows one perspective on the architecture. The participating nodes in the interoperability testing would be of two logical types: test/monitor type and middleware/application type. The testbed test/monitor node is a single logical node that, however, may consist of multiple distributed functions running on multiple nodes. The middleware/application nodes are distributed among participating organizations (i.e., both vendors and users).

To enable interoperable behavior of these nodes, standards at different levels of the interoperability architecture are agreed upon. The testbed has focused on the three layers of the architecture: messaging, business processes, and business content. The standards that are being used at present time are indicated in the figure; these are ebXML business process specification and messaging standards and OAG content standards. However, the testbed architecture only requires that the HTTP protocol is used in order to support basic functions of reflecting and monitoring.

The instrument icons on the architecture diagram indicate the areas where the testbed has worked to identify testing needs or developed infrastructure testing and monitoring tools.