The OASIS standards group gives the nod to the UDDI (universal description, discovery and integration) specification for Web services directories.Aiming to boost business uses of Web services, OASIS, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Systems, on Thursday announced that UDDI (universal description, discovery and integration) specification Version 3.0.2 was approved as an OASIS standard.
Simply put, UDDI is a Web-based distributed directory that enables businesses to list themselves on the Internet and discover each other, similar to a traditional phone books yellow and white pages. The UDDI registry is both a white pages business directory and a technical specifications library.
Touted at the Web Services on Wall Street conference in New York, UDDI 3.0.2 defines a standard method for publishing and discovering services and components in a SOA (service-oriented architecture). The standard provides a mechanism for creating a registry of Web services as well as a way to affiliate registries and define relationships among a number of different registries, OASIS officials said.
Click here to read more about new Web standards recently approved by the W3C and OASIS.
Other features in Version 3.0.2 include support for digital signatures and combining multi-step queries into a single, complex query.
Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of Boston-based OASIS, said the next version of UDDI, which an OASIS technical committee is now working on, will feature taxonomy management and query enhancements, including semantic search, range-based query, and Boolean query operations, information model, and generalized bindings.
"The V3 spec provides an open, standardized approach to ensure widely interoperable communication," Gannon said.
Other Version 3.0.2 features include publisher-assigned keys, subscription APIs, information model improvements and extended discovery features.
However, some attendees at the conference were lukewarm on UDDI.
Speaking at the event, John Davies, vice president at JPMorgan Chase & Co., of New York., and head of technical architecture for prime brokerage, said, "UDDI is good in some uses, but not in the investment bank. Its about as relevant as 19th century gardening techniques or lead piping standards."
Still, vendors saw a place for the standard, especially in the areas of security and access.
"UDDI continues to serve an important role in the deployment of services-oriented architectures", said Karla Norsworthy, vice president of software standards at IBM, in a statement.
"IBM will extend support for UDDI Version 3 in the WebSphere Application Server. The security enhancements in UDDI combined with the industry leading enterprise capabilities in WebSphere will be especially important for customers using UDDI to improve reuse and simplify discovery of Web services across their IT infrastructure."
To read more about IBMs Web services strategy and its recent announcement of SOMA (service oriented modeling and architecture), click here.
"UDDI is doing for server-to-server communication what DNS [Domain Name Service] did for the Internet, by making it much easier and cheaper to connect and stay connected to services," said Eugene Kuznetsov, chairman and chief technical officer of Cambridge, Mass.-based DataPower Technology Inc., in a statement. "DataPower customers see the combination of application-aware networking and UDDI as the cornerstone of SOA."
Check out eWEEK.coms for the latest news, reviews and analysis in Web services.
Web Services, Web 2.0 & SOA 
