This page outlines how SMP and SML play together. The SML (Service Metadata Locator) is only central component in the PEPPOL eDelivery Network. The SMP (Service Metadata Publisher) is a decentralized registry for technical metadata.
Note: this information presented here shows the PEPPOL way which is different from the latest OASIS BDXL way. The SML currently used by PEPPOL (BDMSL operated by EC DG DIGIT) supports both ways, but this page ignores the non-PEPPOL aspects.
This page takes the following assumptions:
Every SMP must initially be registered to the SML. That needs to happen exactly once. Therefore you need to provide the following elements:
The following actions are taking place on the SML side:
SMP-ID.publisher.DNSZONE
is created.
This is the so-called publisher entry.edelivery.tech.ec.europa.eu
and
for the test SMK this is acc.edelivery.tech.ec.europa.eu
.Note: this intermediate DNS record is helpful, if the public URL of an SMP changes. Instead of changing all participants that are linked to an SMP (which can be very many) only this single DNS record is changed, because all participant records are just CNAME records pointing to this "publisher" record.
Note: to the best of my knowledge the provided "physical address" is currently not used in the registration process. Only the "logical address" (the public host name) is considered.
Note: this DNS publisher entry is the reason, why the SMP-ID can only used a limited character set.
Note: when using phoss SMP you have a GUI to do this smoothly at "Administration | SML | SML registration". Alternatively you can perform it via the SMP-SML Tools on this site.
If the public domain name of an SMP changes, this information must be propagated to the respective SML. The change of an SMP-ID is not foreseen, so this value must stay consistent. The change of an SMP certificate (e.g. because of expiration) can also not be done with this process. BDMSL foresees a specific process for this that is described at PEPPOL Certificate update.
The following elements are needed to update the SMP registration in the SML:
The following actions are taking place on the SML side:
SMP-ID.publisher.DNSZONE
)
is updated to the new public URL.
The DNS entry itself is either a CNAME record (if the public URL is a domain name)
or an A record (if the public URL consists of an IP address).Note: when using phoss SMP you have a GUI to do this smoothly at "Administration | SML | SML registration". Alternatively you can perform it via the SMP-SML Tools on this site.
If an SMP leaves the network, after all participants were migrated to different SMPs, it must unregister itself from the SML.
Note: don't test this functionality if you already have participants registered, since all participant DNS entries will also be deleted.
The following elements are needed to delete the SMP registration from the SML:
The following actions are taking place on the SML side:
Note: when using phoss SMP you have a GUI to do this smoothly at "Administration | SML | SML registration". Alternatively you can perform it via the SMP-SML Tools on this site.
Before you can register new participants, ensure you registered your SMP to the SML as stated above.
Each participant must be registered at the SML so that it can be addressed in the network. The following elements need to be provided to make it work:
The following actions are taking place on the SML side:
"B-"+hexstring(md5(lowercase(ID-VALUE)))+"."+ID-SCHEME+"."+DNSZONE
is created.iso6523-actorid-upis
)edelivery.tech.ec.europa.eu
and
for the test SMK this is acc.edelivery.tech.ec.europa.eu
.iso6523-actorid-upis::9915:b
is
http://B-4bbe13b091709af417e9ef61c2e59678.iso6523-actorid-upis.edelivery.tech.ec.europa.eu.
This is a reference to the publisher entry
http://brz.publisher.edelivery.tech.ec.europa.eu
created at the registration process (see above).
Both links lead to the same IP and therefore to the same SMP instance.
Note: the changes to the DNS may not be directly visible to you, because the propagation of new entries can take up to 24 hours to be replicated to all distributed nodes.
Note: the latest version of the SML not only creates a CNAME record for
each participant but also a DNS NAPTR
record pointing to the publisher entry.
For the NAPTR records, a special algorithm for creating DNS names is used instead:
strip-trailing(base32(sha256(lowercase(ID-VALUE))), "=") + "." + ID-SCHEME + "." + SML-ZONE-NAME
Note: when using phoss SMP this is done implicitly if you create a service group but only if SML connection is enabled.
If a participant is no longer needed, it must be manually unregistered from the SML.
The following elements are needed to delete the SMP registration from the SML:
The following actions are taking place on the SML side:
B-...
) for that Participant ID is deletedNote: the changes to the DNS may not be directly visible to you, because the propagation of new entries can take up to 24 hours to be replicated to all distributed nodes.
Note: when using phoss SMP this is done implicitly if you delete a service group but only if SML connection is enabled.