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Dynamic Service Location

In order to send a message, a sender needs to discover where the information about a receiver is stored. The SML (Service Metadata Locator) serves this purpose, and guides the sender towards this location, which is called SMP (Service Metadata Publisher).

eDelivery's Dynamic Service Location enables the Sending Access Point to dynamically discover  the  IP address of the Receiving Access Point.  Instead of looking at a static list of IP addresses, the Sending Access Point consults a Service Metadata Publisher (SMP) where information about every participant in the document and data exchange network is kept up to date, including IP addresses of their Access Point. As at any point in time there can be several SMPs, every participant must be given a unique ID in the form of a website's URL and this must be published by the Service Metadata Locator (SML) on the internet's Domain Name System (DNS). By knowing this URL, the  Access Point is able to dynamically locate the right SMP and therefore the right Access Point.

Which components are involved

Component

Service Metadata Locator (SML) - The SML is used to add/update/delete information about the participants' SMP location on a Domain Name System (DNS). The SML is centralised.

Standards

OASIS BDXL  - Specification originally developed by PEPPOL

More information about the SML standards are available here.

Dynamic Service Location, what are the benefits

Iteroperability

• The information about the participants (what messages they can process, the message protocol that they support, …) is easily discoverable and accessible to you and to everyone else in the data exchange network 
• You can easily change and discover  the registered address of nodes

Security

• You are certain that the origin and the destination of the data and documents are trustworthy

Scalability and Performance

• You are certain that the message exchange network will adapt to an increasing number of nodes, as opposed to a stable number of nodes