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Use cases for the Argo Messaging Service

The integration between different core services using the ARGO Messaging Service (AMS) as transport layer was one of our main goals. The main services are:

  1. EOSC Marketplace (beta): It uses the AMS Service to exchange information about the orders.

  2. AAI Federation Registry (beta): It uses the AMS Service to exchange information with the different deployers (ex, SimpleSamlPhp, Mitre Id, Keycloak).

  3. Operations Portal: Reads the alarms from predefined topics, stores them in a database and displays them in the operations portal.

  4. Accounting: Use of AMS as a transport layer for collecting accounting data from the Sites. The accounting information is gathered from different collectors into a central accounting repository where it is processed to generate statistical summaries that are available through the EGI Accounting Portal.

  5. FedCloud: Use of AMS as a transport layer of the cloud information system. It makes use of the ams-authN. The entry point for users, topics and subscriptions is GOCDB.

  6. ARGO Availability and Reliability Monitoring Service: It uses the AMS service to send the messages from the monitoring engine to other components.

AAI Federation Registry Integration​

The Federation Registry is a portal designed to manage service providers (SPs). It enables service owners to configure federated access for their services using the OIDC and SAML protocols by providing a centralized location for managing the service configuration. Access management is handled by a different component which can differ based on the installation (Keycloak, SSP, MitreID). Service configurations have to be updated on the Access Managment component every time a change is made using the Federation Registry Portal. Argo messaging is the message-oriented middleware technology that is used for this communication between the two parties. The use of Argo Messaging Service allows for:

  • Flexibility: It enables interoperability and integration between different components and systems, regardless of their underlying technologies or platforms.
  • Asynchronous communication: Messages can be sent and received at different times and speeds, without blocking or waiting for a response. This improves the responsiveness throughout the system.
  • Security: It provides built-in security features, such as authentication, authorization, encryption, and digital signatures, which help protect the confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity of the messages exchanged between the Federation Registry and the given Component.

Federation Registry has multiple instances and with the integration of the Argo Messaging Service we have managed to organise and monitor communication between our components. Configuring Argo Messaging and managing topics and subscription was made easy through the use of AMS Admin Ui app and through the API.

Live Updates through our Mattermost integration​

While the Argo Messaging Service is primarily used for scenarios where data is being published by one entity and consumed by another, in order for systems to achieve async event based workflows,the existence of push enabled subscriptions, gives the ability to the system itself, to forward messages to remote destination when they arrive, without having clients constantly asking for new data.

One use case of this flow, is the ability to deliver data to a specific mattermost channel.

We have an mattermost example that mirrors a real use case where we needed to filter and reformat specific messages that were actual alerts, that also needed to be delivered to a mattermost channel in order for issues to be handled as fast as possible.