uddi

UDDI, short for Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration, is an XML-based, open standard for describing, publishing, and discovering web services. It provides a registry that enables organizations to publish information about their businesses and the web services they offer, and allows others to locate and bind to those services for integration.

The UDDI data model centers on a few core entities. A businessEntity represents a company or organization, including names and identifiers. A businessService describes a service offered by the business and may include one or more bindingTemplate elements that specify access points and technical details for using the service. Binding templates point to technical descriptions via tModel references, and tModel objects define reusable specifications or interfaces. Registries also support categorization through categoryBag to aid discovery.

Publishing and discovery in UDDI are performed through SOAP-based APIs. Publishers use operations such as save_business to register entities, while consumers search with find_business, find_service, or get_bindingDetail to locate services and obtain binding information. The data commonly includes service endpoints, service descriptions, and related metadata.

UDDI enjoyed significant industry support in the early days of web services and was standardized as UDDI Version 3. Over time, its adoption declined as organizations favored simpler or more flexible discovery mechanisms, including RESTful catalogs and vendor-specific registries. Many public UDDI services were retired, though private or enterprise registries continue to be used in some environments for governance and internal service discovery.