News

Novell offers free UDDI server

• By Rich Seeley
• December 18, 2002

Seeking to push the least-used component of Web services from its current status as stagnating standard to a future of active deployment, Provo, Utah-based Novell Inc. this week began distributing a free UDDI server download.

The UDDI server can run on top of Novell's directory services platform to provide the security features needed by IT departments to feel comfortable deploying a Web services registry, said Justin Taylor, chief strategist for directory services at Novell.

According to Taylor, based on his experiences traveling to customer sites, analysts are correct when they say security issues are the main stumbling block to implementing UDDI. He found that corporate IT folks are also raising legitimate questions about how the standard can be made to work.

Taylor said the questions he hears most frequently from IT officials are: How do I secure the information in there? How do I add identity information into the mix of UDDI? And how do I deal with survivability of the data, replication of the data?

''That's one of the main reason we've put it [UDDI] into our directory,'' Taylor said of Novell's UDDI strategy. ''The normal advice from people at IBM and Microsoft is to throw it in the database. That leaves the entire security aspect very foggy as to how you're supposed to go about doing that.''

He said the Novell solution is to put it on top of a directory services platform ''because really, UDDI is a directory of different Web services,'' explained Taylor.

The Novell Nsure UDDI server makes use of the company's eDirectory security tools to manage access rights, and requires users who are either publishing or consuming Web services to provide authentication and verify their identity, Taylor said.

He said Novell Nsure UDDI Server would be available starting this week for free download. For more information, click on http://developer.novell.com/uddi.