This section describes the public registry service provided by WebSphere MQ Everyplace.
WebSphere MQ Everyplace provides default services facilitating the sharing of authenticatable entity public credentials (mini-certificates) between WebSphere MQ Everyplace nodes. Access to these mini-certificates is a prerequisite for message-level security. WebSphere MQ Everyplace public registry, also a descendent of base registry, provides a publicly accessible repository for mini-certificates. This is analogous to the personal telephone directory service on a mobile phone, the difference being that it is a set of mini-certificates of the authenticatable entities instead of phone numbers. WebSphere MQ Everyplace public registry is not a purely passive service. If accessed to provide a mini-certificate that is does not hold, and if the public registry is configured with a valid home server, the public registry automatically attempts to get the requested mini-certificate from the public registry of the home server. It also provides a mechanism to share a mini-certificate with the public registry of other WebSphere MQ Everyplace nodes. Together these services provide the building blocks for an intelligent automated mini-certificate replication service that can facilitates the availability of the right mini-certificate at the right time.