Patent ID: 7412667

Claim:
At a computing system in a computing environment, a method for visualizing services, the method comprising: obtaining information about a plurality of services registered with a directory service, the obtained information including for each registered service: a Uniform Resource Identifier to a contract that describes the service's requirements, the requirements including separate behaviors corresponding to each of a plurality of ports indicated in the contract, each port configured to transfer messages of a specified schema-defined message type; generating a visualization to represent the interaction between the plurality of registered services based on the described requirements in the contract for each registered service, the visualization including generating: for each registered service: a service graphical object representing the registered service; and a clustered plurality of port graphical objects, each of the clustered plurality of graphical port objects visually depicted within the service graphical object to indicate that each port graphical object in the clustered plurality of graphical port objects corresponds to the registered service, each of the clustered plurality of port graphical objects visually and individually representing a corresponding port from among the plurality of ports indicated in the registered service's contract, each of the clustered plurality of port graphical objects also corresponding to the specified schema-defined message type of the represented corresponding port; and a separate plurality of message graphical objects depicted separate from the clustered pluralities of graphical port objects for each registered service, each of the separate plurality of message graphical objects depicted on a route between a sending port graphical object, from among the plurality of port graphical objects within one graphical service object, and a receiving port graphical object, from among the plurality of port graphical objects within another different graphical service object, each of the separate plurality of message graphical objects representing a schema-defined message being communicated between corresponding ports of the registered services represented by the sending and receiving port graphical objects respectively so as to indicate the behaviors being utilized at the registered services.