WebMink
Simon Phipps's personal commentary

Why UDDI isn't everywhere [WebTech]

Sean McGrath is a UDDI heretic, or so he claims. In his IT World article, he points out that UDDI comes a distant third to WSDL and SOAP in terms of global deployment. While some may find this a surprise, I don't. SOAP provides a general purpose object access mechanism applicable wherever loosely-coupled computer-to-computer applications are considered. WSDL provides a general-purpose description of a callable service in whichever application area it is deployed. Both are being widely prototyped and, by some accounts, even deployed for mission-critical tasks.

But UDDI only applies in contexts where a heirarchical directory is needed for service discovery. In portal integration, a properties file or LDAP directory can provide a more efficient service, and likewise in current supply-chain integration. In fact, across the board there seem to me to be few applications that depend so much on discovery that UDDI offers a better solution than LDAP at present. Not to say this will always be the case (and no doubt Anne will soon tell me that it's not the case now!), but right now UDDI seems to be a 'could use' rather than even a 'nice to have' and so, even without the deficiencies of categorisation that Sean alludes to, it's no surprise to me that it's rare today.

posted at 7:33 PM (UK) | |