All items stored in the CentraSite registry are objects of a particular type. Users, policies and taxonomies are examples of objects that are stored in the registry. An asset is a specific kind of object that represents an artifact in your SOA environment such as a Web service, an XML schema or a business process. In other words, all assets are objects, but not all objects are assets.

The asset catalog represents the set of all objects in your registry that are assets. Many features within CentraSite operate specifically on the contents of the asset catalog.

Any custom type that you add to CentraSite is considered to be an asset type. Consequently, all instances of a custom type are treated as assets.