Universal Description, Discovery and Integration

(U-D-D-I)

A Web services XML-based message protocol being developed by Ariba, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, and SAP. UDDI is like a phone book: there are "white pages" for basic contact info, "yellow pages" for descriptions of capabilities, and "green pages" for a data dictionary of standards and software interfaces. This is all tied together using an XML base. There will be both public and private registries; the public registries will generally allow one to find a company and the private registries will generally outline the specifics for the company.

Using the registry, a company that wants to do business with another company can find out what Web interfaces that company supports and how to access them. This exchange could be manual or automatic.

Actual data won't be exchanged via UDDI; most companies are tending toward using the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) protocol and Web Services Description Language (WSDL) for the exact syntax.

More Information

• UDDI Organization