UDDI Business Registry Launched -- ADTmag

UDDI Business Registry Launched

By John K. Waters
May 14, 2001

The Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) project today announced that, after successful completion of live beta testing, its global business registry is fully operational. The UDDI Business Registry is a global, public, online directory that gives businesses a uniform way to describe their services, discover other companies' services, and to understand the methods necessary to conduct e-business with a particular company.

UDDI is an XML-based specification for a registry of businesses and the services they provide. It contains white pages (addresses and contacts), yellow pages (industry classification) and green pages (description of services). UDDI is designed to enable software to automatically discover available services on the Web; it rides on top of the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), which invokes services on the Web.

According to Chris Kurt, general program manager for UDDI.org, the need for universal interoperability for B2B transactions is driving the adoption of UDDI. "UDDI is an important component in helping e-businesses fully exploit the advantages of Web services," Kurt said in a recent media release. "...Companies of all sizes can register themselves on UDDI to gain exposure to other e-businesses looking for specific B2B relationships."

Microsoft, IBM, and Arriba were the first companies to join forces to create UDDI, which was introduced in August of last year. The project has expanded from an initial 36 companies to more than 260 community members today. The launch of version 1 of this registry is considered a milestone for the fast-growing organization. Currently, an implementation of the UDDI version 1 spec of the UDDI Business Registry is available at http://www.uddi.org. Version 2 of the UDDI spec is reportedly nearing completion, and is under review by the UDDI Community. Its release is expected very soon, within the next 60 days, according to the UDDI Website.

About the Author

John K. Waters is a freelance writer based in Silicon Valley. He can be reached at [email protected].