page_title: Enterprise inventory pattern
section_title: Usage
hierarchical_section_title: Enterprise inventory pattern / Usage
caption_attribution_description: English: Diagram for Enterprise Inventory (SOA)
context_page_description: In the domain of the service-orientation design paradigm, the Enterprise Inventory is a design pattern by Thomas Erl that answers the question, "How can services be delivered to maximize recomposition?"; the application of this pattern results in a standardized enterprise-wide service inventory that fosters repeated service composition.
context_section_description: As depicted in Diagram A, the services belonging to two different departments, although belonging to the same organization, contain architectural incompatibilities as well as redundancy. An inter-department service composition is not possible until and unless there is some sort of transformation logic introduced in between these services. However, in Diagram B, the application of Enterprise Inventory pattern creates a standardized service inventory that is inherently interoperable.
  In order to be sure that all the services that are being built follow the same design standards, as part of the application of this design pattern, a service inventory blueprint needs to be created. Such a blueprint only consists of candidate services containing candidate capabilities. By coming up with such a service inventory blueprint, the overall scope of the potential enterprise-wide service inventory is established. This usually requires the application of the top-down service-oriented analysis.
  Apart from the creation of an enterprise inventory, the application of this pattern also requires that a technology architecture based on the current enterprise architecture needs to be documented as well so that the services could be built within the boundaries of such an architecture. Doing so guarantees service interoperability as well as behavioral predictability.
caption: Diagram A
  Two individual service inventories belonging to two different organizational departments built using different standards and based on different implementation architectures. The shaded services represent redundant services.
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