Dependency Management tool for REST endpoints

Question

I work in a Rest Oriented environment. The number of endpoints is quite large and span multiple applications. The dependencies between the endpoints are large in number as well and not very well planned. Applications have cyclic dependencies amongst each other. Unfortunately, there is no central location where all the endpoints are documented and declare dependencies (the endpoints that they inturn call).

Is there a tool that will help in such dependency management. I tried searching for a tool online, but not know what such a thing would be called, I am unable to find anything.

Answer 1

My own search, via "sevice dependency discovery", yields a very few select results. IEEE give a couple of hits to papers that talk about SOA service dependancy discovery, and perhaps you can use or adapt the described technique to fit your purpose. Aside from that...

IBM Trivoli and a yet to be released Microsoft Orion sound by their descriptions to be up that alley, if not a bit heavyweight for what you are probably looking for. They look to be targeted to network management for operational concerns. These, it appears, work off live network packet inspection.

Perhaps as a cludge, analyzing and aggregating service or host log files, you might have some opportunity to 'discover' who wants and needs what without digging into the guts of each through the respective sources or various project and deployment descriptors. Of course this presumes that the logging level of each service feels it is important enough to log those cross service requests and the log level isn't filtering those info events out of the log.

To fully understand the breadth and depth of each dependancy, you'll probably need to delve into the service source.