UDDI

Short for Universal Description, Discovery and Integration. A Web-based distributed directory that enables business to list themselves on the Internet and discover each other, similar to a traditional phone book's yellow and white pages.

UDDI is an industry specification for description and discovery of Web Services. UDDI is itself a SOAP/XML Web Service designed for use by developer tools and applications. The Microsoft UDDI Service implementation is available as a part of Windows .NET Server. In conjunction with UDDI integration in the next releases of both Visual Studio .NET and Office, a compelling set of capabilities emerges with availability in Windows .NET Server. This paper describes the opportunity that results from deployment of Microsoft's three leading products in conjunction with UDDI. The solution reaches from the enterprise developer, through IT operations, and to the desktops of each knowledge worker.

In addition to shared Web Service protocol information, UDDI also provides the location of Web Service deployments. For each Web Service that is available within the enterprise, developers can locate its access point programmatically and incorporate more flexible discovery into their applications.

This capability promotes the increasing use of existing Web Services, instead of introducing redundant capabilities. If a service already provides the desired information, developers can locate and used it immediately, instead of creating an additional service with the same functionality.

UDDI also enables fault tolerance in Web Service access. Should a specific access point fail or no longer be available, a single UDDI query can provide the set of alternatives. If there are a number of alternates, the next best option can be selected using the same criteria as described above. Additionally, UDDI entries can be updated to include changes to the location of an access point, or even the web location of a disaster recovery site.