Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration

Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) is a standardized process to publish and discover information of Web services (as well as other services) programmatically or via a graphical user interface that would typically be Web based. The aim of UDDI is to provide a standard, uniform service, which is readily accessible by applications via a programmatic interface or by people via a graphical user interface (GUI). A UDDI directory—referred to as a registry—is meant to be platform independent and can be readily accessible via a Web browser-based GUI or by applications via published application programming interfaces (APIs). The goal of a UDDI directory is to ensure that enterprises and individuals can quickly, easily, and dynamically locate and make use of services—particularly Web services—that are of interest to them. As with all things related to or inspired by Web services, the UDDI is highly Extensible Markup Language (XML)-centric. The core information model used by the UDDI—irrespective of the kind of service being described—is based on an XML schema.