What's New in Enterprise UDDI Services

Developer Reuse

When building applications, developers can search UDDI Services for programmatic resources to reuse, such as a tax calculation service. UDDI Services exposes all of the information needed to invoke a service, enabling developers to easily include a service in an application.

Dynamic Configuration

At run time, an application queries UDDI Services to discover the current binding information for services and then connects directly to those services. For example, a stock broker application can query UDDI Services to obtain configuration information for the different services it consumes such as a stock ticker, customer service applications, and settlement services. Using UDDI Services, IT administrators or developers can provide highly available, reliable applications without having to modify client code.

Greater Productivity

UDDI Services stores both the technical information to build an application compatible with a Web services interface, as well as the information required to successfully bind to that interface at runtime.

UDDI Services provides developers with a mechanism to find each other's services using a set of standard or customized classifications, which encourages code reuse.

With Web services, enterprise developers can share and reuse code regardless of their development platform.

Integrated with Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET and the Microsoft Office Web Services Toolkit, UDDI Services makes it easy for developers to locate and reuse Web services within their application development environment.Developers can easily discover, share, and reuse Web services when building applications or extending existing enterprise applications. A central repository of service description and technical binding information eases the task of reusing existing services and publishing new services based on standard- and custom-categorization schemes. With Web services, developers can reuse components regardless of their development platform.

Greater Manageability

UDDI Services provides an efficient way to categorize programmable resources on the network. IT administrators can configure applications based on classifications schemes such as QoS, location, or organization during service deployment. For applications that check UDDI for binding information, only an update to UDDI is required to point applications at new services.

Smarter Applications

Using UDDI Services in applications, developers can query UDDI Services for service and binding information and dynamically adapt at runtime. This results in more robust and smarter applications that consistently deliver a more reliable experience for users.

Enterprise UDDI Services

Built as a managed code service in Windows Server 2003, Enterprise UDDI Services was developed using Microsoft ASP.NET and the Microsoft .NET Framework. It is a standards-based technology that takes advantage of Microsoft's own experience in running the Microsoft public node of the UDDI Business Registry (UBR). UDDI Services can be accessed through a Web-based user interface or programmatically through a SOAP interface.

Because UDDI Services automatically publishes its existence and location, it is easily discoverable as a Web service. UDDI Services is available in Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition, Enterprise Edition, and Datacenter Edition.

Active Directory Integration

UDDI Services takes advantage of many features in the Active Directory® service. Active Directory provides the authentication and authorization backbone for UDDI Services. All access and permissions to UDDI Services, whether for reading, publishing, or coordination are assigned through a set of roles defined during installation within Active Directory. Furthermore, Active Directory provides one of the means for finding servers on the network that run UDDI Services. In addition, UDDI Services can optionally be installed as a service within Active Directory, enabling IT administrators, users, or applications to perform a simple query to obtain a list of all UDDI Services on the network.

UDDI Application Programming Interface (API) and Web-based User Interface

UDDI Services supports programmatic inquiries through the UDDI API and also includes a Web interface with searching, publishing, and coordination features that are compatible with Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 or later and Netscape Navigator 4.5 or later. UDDI Services supports versions 1.0 and 2.0 of the UDDI Programmer's API, enabling enterprise developers to publish, discover, share, and interact with Web services directly through their development tools and business applications.

Searching and Publication

Authorized users can query UDDI Services and publish entries using the Web-based user interface or the UDDI API.

Coordinator Role

Microsoft has added the coordinator role to provide enhanced administrative capabilities.

Categorization Scheme Management

The Related Category API allows developers to programmatically traverse categorization schemes.

Industry-leading Tools

Microsoft offers UDDI client support through several tools including Visual Studio .NET, the Office XP Web Services Toolkit, and the UDDI software development kit (SDK). Visual Studio .NET provides native support for UDDI Services through the command "Add Web Reference" enabling developers to easily discover Web services and other programmatic resources in UDDI for use in building applications.

Data Import

A UDDI Services coordinator can import UDDI data from an XML file that complies with a defined schema.

Authentication

UDDI Services supports native UDDI authentication and native Windows authentication.

Roles Administration

IT administrators can easily manage access to UDDI Services functions—such as searching and publishing information—by assigning users to one of four roles: user, publisher, coordinator, and administrator.

Microsoft Management Console (MMC) Administration Utility

UDDI Services site administrators can easily configure and remotely administer the UDDI Services server by using the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) utility. Site administrators can backup and restore the UDDI Services database.

Database and Server Configuration

UDDI Services uses the Microsoft Data Engine as the default store. For high reliability and availability scenarios, UDDI Services can use Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000. UDDI Services may be deployed on a single server or across multiple servers. For example, IT administrators could distribute the Web-based user interface and APIs across one or more servers in a typical Web farm configuration and run the database on a separate dedicated server running SQL Server 2000. Or IT administrators could run the database on a clustered instance of SQL Server 2000 using Microsoft's clustering technology—a configuration that provides great scalability and reliability.

Activity Monitoring

Windows Server 2003 provides the ability to audit all authenticated activities performed and the user that performed them.