Novell Inc. on Friday became a member of the UDDI Advisory Group as part of the organizations effort to promote Web services standards.
As a member of the group, Novell will help to define and promote the UDDI (Universal Discovery, Description and Integration) specifications, which provide the vehicle for organizing and managing Web services.
Novell, of Provo, Utah, is interested in the UDDI Advisory Group as part of the companys effort to solidify the role of directories in Web services, the company said
Novell has been making moves in this area recently. Last month, Novell submitted a draft specification to the Internet Engineering Task Force outlining an approach for putting UDDI information into an LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) directory.
In addition, Novell pushed the DSML (Directory Services markup Language) Version 2 standard, which was recently adopted and which allows access to a directory through Web services vehicles such as the SOAP (Simple Open Access Protocol) and XML, the company said.
Two Novell engineers authored the specification Novell submitted last month. Key to the specification was Novells experience in directories. The company maintains that LDAP directories, particularly its eDirectory, are ideal repositories for UDDI data because they offer fast and secure access to information—which is important for Web services.
Novells submission to IETF is titled “LDAP Schema for UDDI” and was authored by Kent Boogert and Bruce Bergeson of Novell. The team originally submitted the spec in February, then refined, updated and resubmitted it late last week.
Winston Bumpus, director of standards for Novell, said in a statement that the adoption of UDDI “is essential in order to realize the promise of Web services—not only to support dynamic transactions among businesses but also to enable seamless integration within the enterprise.”