Overview of the Version 3 UDDI registry

The Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) specification defines a way to publish and discover information about web services.

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 WebSphere® Application Server.

The UDDI registry is a critical component of the IBM® on-demand service-oriented architecture. It solves the problem of discovery of technical components for an enterprise and its partners in the following ways:

The UDDI registry provides control, flexibility, and confidentiality so that an enterprise can protect its e-business investments.
The UDDI registry increases efficiency by making it easier to identify technical assets.
The UDDI registry leverages existing infrastructures

The following example shows how the UDDI registry can be used in a larger enterprise.

A company has an existing 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 has the following characteristics:

It supports the UDDI Version 3.0 specification, in addition to the Version 1.0 and Version 2.0 standard APIs.
It leverages the proven, reliable WebSphere Application Server technology.
It uses a relational database, such as DB2®, for its persistent store.

What is new in UDDI Version 3

The main aspects of the UDDI Version 3 specification that are provided with this version of WebSphere Application Server 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: The publisher of a UDDI entity can specify its key, rather than the registry automatically assigning a unique key. This means that URI-based keys can be used, and it makes it easier to manage multiple registries.
UDDI information model improvements: The UDDI data structures are extended, which improves the ability of UDDI to represent businesses and services through metadata.
Security enhancements: Digital signatures provide 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: You can set policy to define the behavior of a UDDI registry and therefore recognize the different environments in which a UDDI registry is used.
HTTP GET support for UDDI entities: You can use HTTP GET to access XML representations of each of the UDDI data structures. This extends the HTTP GET service beyond the scope for discovery URLs in the UDDI Version 2 specification.

Additional UDDI registry capabilities

The Version 3 UDDI registry in this version of WebSphere Application Server provides the following capabilities that are additional to support for the UDDI Version 3 specification:

Version 2 UDDI inquiry and publish SOAP API compatibility

There is compatibility with the Version 1 and Version 2 SOAP Inquiry and Publish APIs.

UDDI administrative console extension

The WebSphere Application Server administrative 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 Version 3 policy values.

UDDI registry administrative interface

The Java™ Management Extensions (JMX) administrative interface enables administrators to manage UDDI-specific aspects of the WebSphere environment programmatically.

Multidatabase support

The UDDI data is stored in a registry database. The following database products that are supported by WebSphere Application Server are also supported for use as the persistence store for the UDDI registry. For specific details on supported levels, see Detailed system requirements page.

Apache Derby
DB2
Microsoft SQL Server
Oracle

User-defined value set support

You can create your own categorization schemes or value sets. These are in addition to the standard schemes, such as North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), that are provided with the UDDI registry.

UDDI utility tools

You can use UDDI utility tools to import or export entities that use the UDDI Version 2 API.

UDDI user interface

The UDDI user console supports the UDDI Version 3 inquiry and publish APIs.

UDDI Version 3 client

The Java client for UDDI Version 3 handles the construction of raw SOAP requests for the client application. It is a JAX-RPC client and uses Version 3 data types, which are generated from the UDDI Version 3 Web Services Description Language (WSDL) and schema. These data types are serialized or deserialized to the XML, which constitutes the raw UDDI requests.

UDDI Version 2 clients

The following clients for UDDI Version 2 requests are provided:

UDDI4J. A Java class library for issuing UDDI requests.
Deprecated feature: This client is provided in WebSphere Application Server Version 5 for both UDDI Version 1 requests (uddi4j.jar) and Version 2 requests (uddi4jv2.jar). These class libraries are still supported, as part of the com.ibm.uddi.jar file, but are deprecated in WebSphere Application Server Version 6.0.
JAXR. The Java API for XML Registries (JAXR) is a Java client API for accessing UDDI and ebXML registries. WebSphere Application Server provides a JAXR provider for accessing the UDDI registry that conforms to the JAXR 1.0 specification.
EJB. An Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) interface for issuing UDDI Version 2 requests.
Deprecated feature: The UDDI EJB interface is still supported, but is deprecated in WebSphere Application Server Version 6.0.