Chapter 5: UDDI

Before UDDI and SOAP

With COM and CORBA implementations, there is no standard way to find documentation or the locations of a particular remote object. It is a matter of finding the designated developer or administrator who maintains the object and gathering whatever documentation they possess. The documentation may look like the following.

    Responsible Developer: Brian Hochgurtel     COM+ Object: GetDowJonesInfo     COM+ Server: http://advocatemedia.com/     Relative URL: /stocks/GetDowJonesInfo     Proxy location: \\install\GetDowJonesInfo.dll     Description: Returns stock quotes from Dow Jones     Industrials index. For use by internal and external     customers.

The style of documenting remote objects varies from corporation to corporation and can even differ between departments. These inconsistencies led to the standards committees developing UDDI because it provides a standard for describing the location and purpose of a Web Service, along with other business information. Using UDDI in conjunction with WSDL enables you to have a complete description of the Web Service’s sponsoring company, the information available from the Web Service, other Web Services provided, and a description of each method in the service.