New tools streamline SOA Services What role should the network play in SOA? Every time that question comes up, the answer seems to get longer. A new tool from Reactivity promises to make it longer still.The company on Monday unveiled Auto-Discovery for Services, a software feature that automatically discovers and provisions services using the company’s XML gateways. The new feature is available as a download for existing Reactivity appliances and is built into freshly minted XML Gateway 1000 and 4000 models.Reactivity as well as competitors DataPower, Forum Systems, and Layer 7 popularized the appliance approach, which begins with simple XML firewalling and extends all the way to virtualized services that are points of policy enforcement and definition. Joelle Gropper Kaufman, vice president of marketing for Reactivity, called the new technology a “breakthrough” that stems from Reactivity’s XML-Enabled Networking initiative, an ongoing effort to push the runtime grunt work of SOA into the network.Service registries or repositories, can store metadata about services, as well. But they make automation difficult. Pushing auto-discovery and policy definition to Reactivity appliances makes it easy to create smooth run-time connections, keep XML processing fast, handle security and identity management, and keep a detailed audit trail, she said.Reactivity has signed deals with several “top-tier” security and networking partners that will build deep content inspection and threat defense in their products as an embedded library, Kaufman said. News on those deals is due next quarter, she said. Software DevelopmentSecurity