Finding the Right Formula For UDDI
Some believe UDDI will be as pervasive in directories and repositories as XML is in defining metadata and SOAP is in encapsulating software components. Simply put, UDDI makes it possible to search any registry for specific Web services, such as business rules and SOAP-based components. In addition to helping users and applications find specific Web services, UDDI will allow them to query data that describes how those services are used.
"UDDI is really a registry of Web services, wherever they're deployed, and descriptions of how to interact with them," says Chris Kurt, program manager for UDDI.org at Microsoft and a member of Microsoft's XML standards team. UDDI also specifies a set of APIs to interact with the registry and provides references on how to interface with applications. UDDI registries have basic white and yellow pages models for finding services.
Solution providers will increasingly find UDDI implemented in various forms of repositories, including application servers, middleware, databases and directories. IBM is already shipping a UDDI registry based on its WebSphere application server suite; Novell recently announced plans to release a UDDI server by year's end that will run atop its eDirectory software; and Microsoft's forthcoming .Net servers will support UDDI through microcode in the new server platforms and via its SQL Server database. While UDDI will be key to tying together Web services, the market is still nascent. "Everyone's trying to get mind share," says Michael Neuenschwander, an analyst at the Burton Group.
In July, work on UDDI was turned over to Oasis, a standards body that governs e-business and Web-services standards, including XML. The move coincided with the release of version 3 of the UDDI spec, which gives the standard key enterprise capabilities, such as support for XML-based security and policy management, internationalization and a subscription API that generates messages when changes are made to a UDDI repository. And late last month, Oasis announced the formation of a technical committee that will develop the technical standards and best practices. Members of the technical committee include BEA Systems, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, Novell, Oracle, Sun and Verisign, among others.
Putting UDDI To Work
UDDI proponents IBM and Microsoft initially envisioned the formation of public UDDI directories, called universal business repositories, where any business or government agency could publish a Web service, such as payment schemes or trading-partner agreements, and allow any partner, supplier or customer to find the service and build it into their own applications. But after the B2B bubble burst and companies were reluctant to share their information in an open forum, the work on UDDI moved to more closed implementations,either private trading networks or within individual enterprises.
"That's where we're seeing the real growth, particularly because Web services is an emerging technology, and people tend to experiment with those inside their enterprises," says Bob Sutor, IBM's director of e-business standards strategy.
In order for Web services to proliferate, customers and solution providers should be looking at UDDI as a key component of that infrastructure. Sutor describes it as a catch-22. "You need to have a registry to get the growth of Web services, but you need a whole bunch of Web services to put in the registry to make it useful," Sutor says.
So, what will make UDDI useful? It's likely to proliferate within organizations for sharing business logic among applications. For example, Microsoft's Kurt says, if an enterprise wants to make a change-of-address service originally built for an HR application for other apps, a UDDI registry can help internal developers, or even end users, find the software components and business rules for using those programs.
But some integrators have more ambitious goals for UDDI. Redwood City, Calif.-based E2open, which operates a supply-chain and product-collaboration and trading network, is creating a UDDI registry that lets customers publish their Web services to those partners and customers they want to share them with.
"It's really the central repository for trading partners to talk to each other,everything from trading-partner agreements to digital certificates to business rules will all go through this directory," says Karthik Srinivasan, director of product development at E2open.
The latest version of the UDDI spec is published on the
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