Any user who has permission to publish an asset to CentraSite can define an application asset. However, not all users are generally qualified to create an asset of this type. Defining applications is a critical task that should be performed only by an administrator who is familiar with the webMethods Mediator(s), virtual services and run-time policies in your environment.

An application asset becomes available to Mediator only when you synchronize the consumer application in CentraSite with the Mediator.

Treat application assets as global objects and make them available to all organizations. Be sure that your registry contains only one application asset per consumer application (that is, a consumer application should be represented by one and only one application asset in the registry).

Be sure that the identifiers that you assign to an application asset are unique to that application asset. If multiple application assets have the same identifier, Mediator will simply associate the identifier with the first matching application it finds in its local list of application assets at run time.

If you control access to virtual services based on consumer applications (that is, you use run-time policies that include the Authorize User action), consider:

Including an approval step in your consumer-registration policy that requires a security administrator to review and approve the registration event.

Giving only a small group of knowledgeable administrators permission to modify an application asset after it is registered to a virtual service. This will prevent users from adding unauthorized identifiers to an existing application asset, and thus, allowing unauthorized consumer applications to access the virtual service.