Overview of the V3 UDDI registry
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 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 WAS. 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
For example, the UDDI registry can be used in the following way within a larger enterprise: A company has a legacy 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:
- Supports the UDDI V3.0 specification in addition to the V1.0 and V2.0 standard APIs
- Leverages the proven, reliable WAS technology
- Uses a relational database, such as DB2, for its persistent store
What is new in UDDI V3
The main aspects of the UDDI V3 specification that are provided within this version of WAS 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
Publisher-assigned keys mean that the publisher of a UDDI entity can specify its key, rather than having a unique key assigned by the registry. This function enables the use of more human-friendly, URI-based keys, which also makes it easier to manage multiple registries.
UDDI information model improvements
The UDDI data structures are extended in a number of ways, which improves the ability of UDDI to represent businesses and services through metadata.
Security enhancements
The introduction of digital signatures provides 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
Setting the policy defines the behavior of a UDDI registry and recognizes the different environments in which a UDDI registry is used.
HTTP GET support for UDDI entities
The HTTP GET service is extended beyond the scope for discovery URLs that is a part of the UDDI V2 specification. With this service, you can use HTTP GET to access XML representations of each of the UDDI data structures.
Additional UDDI registry capabilities
In addition to support for the UDDI V3 specification, the V3 UDDI registry in this version of WAS provides the following capabilities:
V2 UDDI inquiry and publish SOAP API compatibility
Backward compatibility is maintained for the V1 and V2 SOAP inquiry and publish APIs.
UDDI console extension
The 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 V3 policy values.
UDDI registry administrative interface
There is a JMX administrative interface so that administrators can 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 WAS 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
- Oracle versions 9i and 10g
User-defined value set support
You can create your own categorization schemes or value sets, in addition to the standard schemes, such as North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), that are provided with the UDDI registry.
UDDI utility tools
UDDI utility tools support the import and export of entities using the UDDI V2 API.
UDDI user interface
The UDDI user console supports the inquiry and publish APIs, providing a similar level of support for the V3 APIs.
UDDI V3 client
The Java client for UDDI V3 handles the construction of raw SOAP requests for the client application. It is a JAX-RPC client and uses V3 data types, which are generated from the UDDI V3 Web Services Description Language (WSDL) and schema. These data types are serialized or deserialized to the XML, which constitutes the raw UDDI requests.
UDDI V2 clients The following clients for UDDI V2 requests are provided:
- UDDI4J. A Java class library for issuing UDDI requests. This client is provided in WAS V5 for both UDDI V1 requests (uddi4j.jar) and V2 requests (uddi4jv2.jar). These class libraries are still supported, as part of the com.ibm.uddi_1.0.0.jar file, but are now both deprecated.
- JAXR. The Java API for XML Registries (JAXR) is a Java client API for accessing UDDI and ebXML registries. WAS provides a JAXR provider for accessing the UDDI registry that conforms to the JAXR 1.0 specification.
- EJB. An EJB interface for issuing UDDI version 2 requests. This client is still supported, but is now deprecated.
Related tasks
Use the UDDI registry