B2B Integration : A Practical Guide to Collaborative E-commerce

330 B2B Integration — A Practical Guide to Collaborative E-commerce
• Unpublished when it is no longer available or needed; and
• Integrated with other Web services using Internet standards.
As discussed, Web services involve exchange of XML messages.
It is mandatory for Web services to associate XML schemas (which
define the data types, requirements of XML documents used for
messages, types of messages and operations the messages are mapped
to) with these XML messages. Web services can be implemented in any
language (such as C, Java and C++) using any technology such as EJB
and CORBA, as long as they are able to generate and parse XML
documents.
11.4. Universal Description, Discovery and
Integration (UDDI)
Although it may seem relatively easy to discover the Web services of
known trading partners, it is not easy to know all services and how they
work. Again, if a company is involved in dynamic business trading,
how would it know the Web services offered by new partners? How
will it ensure that the information that it has about a service is up-todate?
Thus, there is need for a mechanism which provides real-time
information about services, ensures consistency in service description
formats and makes it easy to track the changes as they occur. There is
a need for a solution that maintains distributed directories/registries
of businesses and their services in a common language and format
understood by all. That solution is UDDI — a primary resource for
identifying and connecting with potential collaborative partners using
Web services.
11.4.1. What is UDDI?
UDDI is a centralized business registry that enables business-to-business
communication. UDDI is a standard way of addressing the need for a
repository or broker that will manage a directory of service interfaces.
IBM, Microsoft and Ariba outlined their specification to help facilitate
the creation, description, discovery and integration of Web-based services.