Configuration Model

This overarching model serves as a framework for understanding the concepts and tasks of configuring a realm. Refer back to this model as you read the topics that follow.

The model is only a skeleton. It is not a complete description. It is not necessary to completely understand every aspect of the model the first time you read this section. To help integrate the new ideas, return to this model after reading subsequent sections.

• Endpoints represent requirements.
  • Endpoints constitute a program’s communication interface. An application program with one or more endpoints requires communication through those endpoints.
  • For each of its endpoints, an application program requires communication using some or all of the endpoint’s four abilities (see Abilities). That is, each ability that the program uses for communication is a separate and specific functional requirement.
• A transport connector represents a set of abilities. It binds a transport’s abilities to an endpoint’s required abilities. When a set of transport connectors covers all the required abilities of an endpoint, then the connectors satisfy the endpoint (that is, they satisfy the requirements that the endpoint represents).
• An application instance definition represents a solution.
  • It implements each endpoint (requirement) with a set of connectors (abilities), satisfying the requirement.
  • Moreover, it targets a set of process instances. A matching algorithm dynamically determines that target set.
  • You can define several such solutions, each satisfying the same requirements with different abilities, and targeting a different set of process instances.

The topics that follow describe endpoint implementation and its configuration: first at the micro level of endpoints, abilities, and connectors, and then at the macro level of applications and application instances. In practice, administrators generally configure from both ends inward:

• Endpoint, transport
• Application, application instance, transport connector