Reviews

Briefing: X-registry

• By Mike Gunderloy
• May 17, 2004

X-registry
starting at $35,000
Infravio
Cupertino, California
(877) 246-3728
www.infravio.com

X-registry is a new product from Infravio designed to help companies with a portfolio of Web services manage them all. It's designed to create an online "marketplace" of Web services for an intranet or extranet, and to help people navigate through available offerings and effectively consume them. It also ties into Infravio's other software (and into their partnership with NetIQ) as a part of an overall Web services management solution.

X-registry consolidates data from multiple UDDI and ebXML registries to form a single federated registry that knows how to forward results. Users can use a browser interface to see and test available Web services, and to set up "contracts" (another Infravio concept) to use those Web services in a particular way. X-registry also enables a two-way information flow so that consumers of Web services also talk to the providers. This lets X-registry handle things like versioning and authorization based on information about consumers.

X-registry is aimed at both technical and business users. It lets you test the Web services in the browser interface, and it's smart enough to understand the relationship between multiple services (ie, if you want to use service A you must also use services B and C in your application). The metadata in the repository is extensible beyond that supported by UDDI and ebXML, so you can customize X-registry to your own needs (and the Infravio people tell me that most installations include customization work). It's being used today in large companies including Sabre and Providence Healthcare, and apparently doing them a world of good. If your company is buying into Web services as the wave of the future, you ought to check out Infravio's offerings.