The registry refers to the part of CentraSite that manages the set of objects that represent the artifacts in your SOA environment (for example., Web services, XML schemas, BPEL processes). The registry also contains supporting objects such as Organizations, Users, Policies, and Taxonomies that CentraSite itself uses to manage and organize the SOA artifacts that are contained in the registry.

It is important to understand that the registry functions as a directory, not a library. That is, it describes the properties of an artifact (for example, name, description, location, contact information, technical specifications, lifecycle disposition), but it does not hold the artifact itself. For example, the registry entry for an XML schema contains information about the XML schema. However, the schema itself resides in a different data store known as the repository.

The CentraSite registry supports the Java API for XML Registries (JAXR). JAXR is a standard API for working with XML registries. The JAXR information model provides a standard way to describe registry content. Its API includes powerful capabilities for describing, classifying, relating, and querying the content of a registry.