Working with the Registry

A registry is a content store and a metadata repository for various artifacts such as services, WSDLs and configuration files. These artifacts are keyed by unique paths where a path is similar to a Unix file path. In WSO2 products, all configurations pertaining to modules, logging, security, data sources and other service groups are stored in the registry by default.

The registry kernel of WSO2 provides the basic registry and repository functionality. WSO2 products use the services provided by the registry kernel to establish their own registry spaces, which are utilized for storing data and persisting configuration. Here are some of the features provided by the WSO2 Registry interface:

• Provides the facility to organize resources into collections.
• Keeps multiple versions of resources.
• Manages social aspects such as rating of resources.
• Provides AtomPub interfaces to publish, view and manage resources from remote or non-Java clients.

The Registry space of any WSO2 product contains three major partitions:

• Local Repository : Used to store configuration and runtime data that is local to the server. This partition is not to be shared with multiple servers. Mount point is /_system/local
  
• Configuration Repository : Used to store product-specific configurations. This partition can be shared across multiple instances of the same product (e.g., sharing ESB configurations across an ESB cluster). Mount point is /_system/config. 
• Governance Repository : Used to store configuration and data that are shared across the whole platform. This typically includes services, service descriptions, endpoints or datasources. Mount point of theis registry is /_system/governance.

You can browse the contents of the registry using the product's management console.

This section provides the following information:

• Managing the Registry
• Searching the Registry
• Using Remote Registry Instances for the Registry Partitions