Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) specification
defines a way to publish and discover information about Web services.
UDDI includes an XML schema for SOAP messages that defines a set of documents
to describe business and services information, a common set of APIs for querying
and publishing information to the directories, and an API for replicating
directory entries between peer UDDI nodes.
UDDI registries
UDDI manages the discovery of Web
services by relying on a distributed registry of businesses and their service
descriptions implemented in a common XML format. Before you can publish your
business entity and Web service to a public registry, you must first register
your business entity with a UDDI registry.
UDDI registries come in two
forms: public and private. Both types comply to the same specifications.
A private registry enables you to publish and test your internal e-business
applications in a secure, private environment.
A public registry
is a collection of peer directories that contain information about businesses
and services. It locates services that are registered at one of its peer nodes
and facilitates the discovery of published Web services. Data is replicated
at each of the registries on a regular basis. This ensures consistency in
service description formats and makes it easy to track changes as they occur. IBM® maintains
two public registries called the IBM UDDI Business Registry and the IBM UDDI Test
Registry. The IBM UDDI
Test Registry allows you to develop your Web service and experience the UDDI
registration process without placing your Web service in an official registry.
Use the IBM UDDI
Test Registry to experiment with UDDI, and to test and validate your Web service.
For more information on the IBM's public registries, refer to
https://uddi.ibm.com For
a list of public registries, refer to
https://www.uddi.org/register.html
A private
registry allows you to publish and test your internal applications in a secure,
private environment.
The UDDI Business Registry acts as a B2B directory
linking marketplaces, buyers, and sellers. The information provided in the
registry consists of three components: white pages, yellow pages, and green
pages. White pages include the business name, contact information, and a text
description of the business's services. Yellow pages include industrial categorizations
based on standard taxonomies such as NAICS, ISO 3166, and UNSPSC. Green pages
include references to specifications for Web services and pointers to various
file and URL-based discovery mechanisms. This makes it easy for businesses
to integrate across marketplaces. Because it is registered, information is
made available across all applications. For more information on NAICS refer
to
www.naics.com For
more information on UNSPSC refer to
www.unspsc.org For more information on ISO 3166 refer
to
https://www.iso.org/iso/en/prods-services/iso3166ma/index.html
Businesses
populate the registry with descriptions of the services that they support.
UDDI assigns a unique identifier to each service description and business
registration. These become the service and business keys respectively. Search
engines, and applications query the registry to discover services. UDDI servers
are a directory of available services and service providers.