UDDI Registry Introduction

The Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) protocol is one of the major building blocks required for successful Web services. UDDI creates a standard interoperable platform that enables companies and applications to quickly, easily, and dynamically find and use Web services over the Internet. UDDI also allows operational registries to be maintained for different purposes in different contexts. UDDI is a cross-industry effort driven by major platform and software providers, as well as marketplace operators and e-business leaders within the OASIS standards consortium. UDDI has gone through 3 revisions and the latest version is 3.0.2. Additional information regarding UDDI can be found at http://uddi.xml.org.

The UDDI Registry implements the UDDI specification. UDDI is a Web-based distributed directory that enables businesses to list themselves on the Internet and discover each other, similar to a traditional phone book's yellow and white pages. The UDDI registry is both a white pages business directory and a technical specifications library. The Registry is designed to store information about Businesses and Services and it holds references to detailed documentation.

A business publishes services to the UDDI registry. A client looks up the service in the registry and receives service binding information. The client then uses the binding information to invoke the service. The UDDI APIs are SOAP based for interoperability reasons. The UDDI v3 specification defines 9 APIs:

1. UDDI_Security_PortType, defines the API to obtain a security token. With a valid security token a publisher can publish to the registry. A security token can be used for the entire session.
2. UDDI_Publication_PortType, defines the API to publish business and service information to the UDDI registry.
3. UDDI_Inquiry_PortType, defines the API to query the UDDI registry. Typically this API does not require a security token.
4. UDDI_CustodyTransfer_PortType, this API can be used to transfer the custody of a business from one UDDI node to another.
5. UDDI_Subscription_PortType, defines the API to register for updates on a particular business of service.
6. UDDI_SubscriptionListener_PortType, defines the API a client must implement to receive subscription notifications from a UDDI node.
7. UDDI_Replication_PortType, defines the API to replicate registry data between UDDI nodes.
8. UDDI_ValueSetValidation_PortType, by nodes to allow external providers of value set validation. Web services to assess whether keyedReferences or keyedReferenceGroups are valid.
9. UDDI_ValueSetCaching_PortType, UDDI nodes may perform validation of publisher references themselves using the cached values obtained from such a Web service.