Introduction to Asset Catalog

The asset catalog functions as the central registry of reusable assets within a development environment. When initially installed, CentraSite's asset catalog supports several types of assets, such as Web Services, REST Services, OData Services, XML Schemas. However, an administrator can configure the asset catalog to hold additional assets that are customized for your environment. For example, the catalog at your site might be configured to hold items such as reusable Java libraries or portlets in addition to the basic set of assets that CentraSite supports.

Not all operations are allowed for all users. A user's role and the instance-level permissions on an asset determine which assets a user is allowed to access and what operations the user is allowed to perform on the asset.

Provider users use the asset catalog to view and manage their organization's assets, publish assets, modify asset details, and assign permissions to assets.

Each entry in the asset catalog represents a single asset such as a Web Service, REST Service, OData Service, XML Schema. An entry is composed of a set of attributes, a set of profiles, and optionally one or more associated files.

An attribute represents a specified characteristic or property of an asset. All assets have the basic set of attributes. In addition to the basic set of attributes, an asset can also have any number of extended attributes that are specific to the asset's type. For example, a Web service asset includes attributes that identify the service's endpoints, provide links to additional documentation, and indicate whether the service is stateful or stateless. The specific set of extended attributes an asset has depends on how your administrator has configured the asset's type.

A profile is a visual grouping of a set of attributes. The set of profiles that display for an asset, as well as the specific attributes that appear within the profiles, vary by asset type.

You can browse or search for assets by using a keyword, or by performing an advanced search that sorts and filters the results.

CentraSite Business UI: You can obtain an alphabetical list of assets available in the CentraSite registry.

CentraSite Control: You can obtain a hierarchical view of assets, organized and filtered according to a selected taxonomy.

CentraSite Business UI: You can search for assets whose attributes contain a certain keyword. Additionally, you can search for assets on the basis of classifiers (for example, Assets, Everything) that are defined in the customization file.

CentraSite Control: You can search for assets whose attributes contain a certain keyword.

CentraSite Business UI: You can search for assets on the basis of several search criteria (keywords, asset types, lifecycle models, taxonomies, and attributes) using logical ALL or ANY combinations.

CentraSite Control: You can search for assets and supporting documents on the basis of several search criteria using logical AND or OR combinations.