The Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI)
specification defines a way to publish and discover information about
Web services. The term Web service describes specific
business functionality that is exposed by a company, usually through
an Internet connection, to allow another company, its subsidiaries,
or a software program, to use the service.
You can find the UDDI specification on the OASIS UDDI Web page.
The UDDI specification defines a standard for the visibility, reusability,
and manageability that are essential for a service-oriented architecture
(SOA) registry service.
The UDDI registry is a directory for Web services that is implemented
using the UDDI specification. It is a component of WebSphere Application
Server.
The UDDI registry is a critical component of the IBM
® on-demand service-oriented architecture.
It solves the problem of discovery of technical components for an
enterprise and its partners in the following ways:
- The UDDI registry provides control, flexibility, and confidentiality
so that an enterprise can protect its e-business investments.
- The UDDI registry increases efficiency by making it easier to
identify technical assets.
- The UDDI registry leverages existing infrastructures
The following example shows how the UDDI registry can be used in
a larger enterprise.
A company has an existing application that provides telephone numbers
and human resources (HR) information about employees. This application
is turned into a Web service and published to the registry. A developer
in the same company wants to write an application for a procurement
function that also needs to provide HR information to the supplier.
The application needs to give the supplier access to the employee
account codes after the employee provides a name or serial number.
Before Web services, the developer might be in one of the following
situations:
- The developer does not know about the similar application.
- The developer knows about the application, but cannot reuse it
because of technical barriers.
- The developer knows about the application and reuses it, but only
after significant time and negotiation.
With UDDI, the developer can search for the Web service and reuse
the existing technical component in their new application for the
supplier in minutes. The developer saves time and gets the application
running sooner, thereby increasing efficiency and saving the company
time and money. The UDDI registry was the first Version 2 standard-compliant
UDDI registry for private enterprise work. The UDDI registry in this
version has the following characteristics:
- It supports the UDDI Version 3.0 specification, in addition to
the Version 1.0 and Version 2.0 standard APIs.
- It leverages the proven, reliable WebSphere® Application Server technology.
- It uses a relational database, such as DB2®, for its persistent store.
What is new in UDDI Version 3
The main aspects
of the UDDI Version 3 specification that are provided with this version
of WebSphere Application Server are as follows:
- Improved recognition of the importance of private UDDI registries
- Private UDDI registries are registries that are installed, owned,
managed, and controlled by a separate body such as a department within
a company, a company, an industry consortium, or an e-marketplace.
- Publisher-assigned keys
- The publisher of a UDDI entity can specify its key, rather than
the registry automatically assigning a unique key. This means that
more human-friendly, URI-based keys can be used, and it makes it easier
to manage multiple registries.
- UDDI information model improvements
- The UDDI data structures are extended, which improves the ability
of UDDI to represent businesses and services through metadata.
- Security enhancements
- Digital signatures provide additional security. Each of the main
UDDI entities can be digitally signed, which improves the integrity
and trustworthiness of UDDI data.
- Ownership transfer APIs
- These APIs support the transfer of the ownership of a UDDI entity
from one publisher to another.
- UDDI policy
- You can set policy to define the behavior of a UDDI registry and
therefore recognize the different environments in which a UDDI registry
is used.
- HTTP GET support for UDDI entities
- You can use HTTP GET to access XML representations of each of
the UDDI data structures. This extends the HTTP GET service beyond
the scope for discovery URLs in the UDDI Version 2 specification.
Additional UDDI registry capabilities
The
Version 3 UDDI registry in this version of WebSphere Application Server
provides the following capabilities that are additional to support
for the UDDI Version 3 specification:
- Version 2 UDDI inquiry and publish SOAP API compatibility
- There is backward compatibility for the Version 1 and Version
2 SOAP inquiry and publish APIs.
- UDDI administrative console extension
- The WebSphere Application Server administrative console includes
a section that administrators can use to manage UDDI-specific aspects
of their WebSphere environment. This management includes the ability
to set defaults for initialization of the UDDI node, such as its node
ID, and to set the UDDI Version 3 policy values.
- UDDI registry administrative interface
- The Java Management Extensions (JMX) administrative interface
enables administrators to manage UDDI-specific aspects of the WebSphere
environment programmatically.
- Multidatabase support
- The UDDI data is persisted to a registry database. The following
database products that are supported by WebSphere Application Server
are also supported for use as the persistence store for the UDDI registry.
For specific details on supported levels, see Detailed system requirements page.
- Cloudscape Version 5.1
DB2 Version 8
DB2 for z/OS Versions 7 and 8
Oracle Versions 9i and 10g
- User-defined value set support
- You can create your own categorization schemes or value sets.
These are in addition to the standard schemes, such as North American
Industry Classification System (NAICS), that are provided with the
UDDI registry.
- UDDI utility tools
- You can use UDDI utility tools to import or export entities that
use the UDDI Version 2 API.
- UDDI user interface
- The UDDI user console supports the UDDI Version 3 inquiry and
publish APIs.
- UDDI Version 3 client
- The Java client for UDDI Version 3 handles the construction of
raw SOAP requests for the client application. It is a JAX-RPC client
and uses Version 3 data types, which are generated from the UDDI Version
3 Web Services Description Language (WSDL) and schema. These data
types are serialized or deserialized to the XML, which constitutes
the raw UDDI requests.
- UDDI Version 2 clients
- The following clients for UDDI Version 2 requests are provided:
- UDDI4J. A Java class library for issuing
UDDI requests.
Deprecated feature: This client is provided in WebSphere Application Server Version 5
for both UDDI Version 1 requests (
uddi4j.jar)
and Version 2 requests (
uddi4jv2.jar). These
class libraries are still supported, but are deprecated in WebSphere Application Server Version 6.0.
depfeat
- JAXR. The Java API for XML Registries (JAXR) is a Java client
API for accessing UDDI and ebXML registries. WebSphere Application
Server provides a JAXR provider for accessing the UDDI registry that
conforms to the JAXR 1.0 specification.
- EJB. An Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) interface for issuing UDDI
Version 2 requests.
Deprecated feature: The UDDI EJB interface
is still supported, but is deprecated in WebSphere Application
Server Version 6.0.
depfeat