Chapter 6: UDDI

Overview

The Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) specification defines a platform-independent framework for businesses to describe their publicly available services, discover other services, and share information about points of interaction in a global registry. UDDI is a building block that enables organizations to quickly find and conduct business transactions with other organizations, using open standards.

The UDDI specification is an attempt for organizations to accomplish the following:

• Discover the right partner to conduct business with, out of the millions that exist on the Internet today

• Create an industry-accepted, standardized approach to reach partners and customers with information on their services and convey the preferred method for integration between disparate systems

• Characterize how business transactions are used in commerce, once a preferred partner is selected through electronic means

UDDI can be the solution to many business problems. By simplifying B2B interactions, a business can discover other businesses independent of the choice of standards and protocols.

The UDDI specification is the first cross-industry initiative pushed by corporations, software vendors, and industry consortiums. It addresses many of the issues that limit the rapid adoption of commerce over the Internet. The founding fathers of UDDI were Ariba, IBM, and Microsoft. SOAP and WSDL are championed by W3C, while UDDI is an independent business undertaking.