SOA Patterns > Service Messaging Patterns > Service Instance Routing
Service Instance Routing (Karmarkar)
How can consumers contact and interact with service instances without the need for proprietary processing logic?
Problem
When required to repeatedly access a specific stateful service instance, consumers must rely on custom logic that more tightly couples them to the service.
Solution
The service provides an instance identifier along with its destination information in a standardized format that shields the consumer from having to resort to custom logic.
Application
The service is still required to provide custom logic to generate and manage instance identifiers, and both service and consumer require a common messaging infrastructure.
Impacts
This pattern can introduce the need for significant infrastructure upgrades and when misused can further lead to overly stateful messaging activities that can violate the Service Statelessness principle.
Architecture
Inventory, Service, Composition
Service A, acting as a service consumer, issues a request message to Service B. Instance X of Service B is created (1), and a new message containing a reference to the destination of Service B (which includes the Instance X identifier) is returned back to Service A (2). Service A issues a second message that is routed to Instance X of Service B (3) without the need for proprietary logic. The instance identifier is located in the header of this message and is therefore kept separate from the message body.
Related Patterns in This Catalog
Asynchronous Queuing, Event-Driven Messaging, Messaging Metadata, Service Agent, Service Messaging, State Messaging
Related Service-Oriented Computing Goals
This page contains excerpts from:
SOA Design Patterns by Thomas Erl
(ISBN: 0136135161, Hardcover, Full-Color, 400+ Illustrations, 865 pages)
For more information about this book, visit www.arcitura.com/books.