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.
A critical component of IBM's on-demand service-oriented architecture,
the UDDI registry solves the problem of discovery of technical components
for an enterprise and its partners by:
- Providing control, flexibility, and confidentiality so that an enterprise
can protect its e-business investments
- Increasing efficiency by making it easier to identify technical assets
- Leveraging 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 10.1
DB2 Version 8
DB2 for iSeries Versions 5.2 and 5.3
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, as part of the
com.ibm.uddi_1.0.0.jar file,
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