Accessing Web Services

A growing number of companies that host web services publish their services through a registry. Some of these registries comply with the Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) specification. The UDDI specification sets standards for describing businesses that host web services and for finding or discovering them through a network connection. Typically, a UDDI registry has a web interface that contains direct or indirect links to WSDL documents.

A UDDI Business Registry (UBR) is a public subscriber service. Any company can enroll in a UBR, and anyone can search this information. Private registries are often made available only through password access. Using the Web Service stage, you have direct access to several UBRs.

UBR data falls in these groups:

• White pages, which contain contact and general information about a company.
• Yellow pages, which include taxonomies such as product categories and North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) identifiers.
• Green pages, which contain technical specifications of the web service.

The following diagram illustrates the relationship between DataStage®, a web service, and web service registries.