What Is UDDI?

The goal of UDDI is to provide a Web-based registry for the publishing and advertising of businesses and their Web services so that clients can not only discover such services, but also glean information on how to invoke them.

UDDI is composed of the following:

• An API for searching the registry, the Inquiry API, and for publishing your service in the registry, the Publish API. UDDI publishes the API specifications but does not provide an implementation. These specifications are available at http://www.uddi.org/pubs/ProgrammersAPI_v2.pdf.

• A prescribed set of data structures used by the API. Again, UDDI publishes only the specification, not the implementation. These specifications are available at http://www.uddi.org/pubs/DataStructure_v2.pdf.

• A schema definition for the various SOAP messages and responses that are necessitated by the API. This schema is available at http://www.uddi.org/schema/uddi_v2.xsd.