Taking a Quick Look at Universal Description Discovery and Integration (UDDI)

In Chapter 6, “Making .NET Web Services Available to Others,” you will learn ways you can make the web services you create accessible to others on the Internet. At that time, you will examine the Universal Description Discovery and Integration (UDDI) protocol that assists developers in locating web services that correspond to a specific task.

UDDI.org began as a collaboration between Ariba, Microsoft, and IBM. The organization’s goal is to promote the use and distribution of web services and the development of the UDDI protocol. For more information on UDDI, visit the organization’s website at www.uddi.org, as shown in Figure 4.10.

The UDDI protocol exists to help programmers publish the web services they create. When you use the Add a Web Reference dialog box to reference a web service within your program, you can click on the UDDI Directory link to search the web services by industry, as shown in Figure 4.11. In Chapter 6, you will learn the steps you must perform to use UDDI to publicize the services you create.

Note 

Unfortunately, to date, few programmers are placing services within the UDDI directories. Do not mistake the limited programmer support for UDDI for lack of programmer interest in web services. As you will see in Chapter 6, programmers are using other websites, such as XMethods, to advertise and promote the services they are creating. Over time, as programmers understand the benefits they can achieve from using a worldwide directory such as the UDDI, you will find the number of entries within the directory will begin to grow quickly.

Figure 4.10: For specifics on the UDDI protocol and ways you can make your web services available to others, visit the UDDI.org website.