UDDI

[Krishna Sankar <ksankar@cisco.com>]

Hi all,

	There were all kinds of speculations going on with the UDDI. So I printed
out all the documents on the UDDI site and read them thru (It is about 12:00
AM; tomorrow is now today and I am still at work ;-0)

	Here are some quick observations:

	1.	UDDI (sometimes they are calling it UUDI (P 4 of the "UDDI XML Structure
Reference") does *not* aim at the reg/rep functionality. The idea is to
advertise Web Services and technical interface. Remember - just the
technical programming interface, no tpa, no profiles, no business processes,
no business messages, yet !

	They have just the tModel which contains the technical fingerprint - which
could be ebXML ! The tModel is just a metadata like overview doc,
overviewdoc etc.!

	2. Mentions ebXML on P 18 of the UDDI XML Structure Reference document !

	3. To me it looks like the trading services CORBA provides, just over SOAP
(Why, I have no idea !)

	4.	UDDI Programmer's API Specification has some 20 or so API calls which
are quite nice.

	5.	The next layer up is the USIP (Universal Service Interop Protocol) which
I think might be more into other ebXML areas. I saw this in one figure (P3
of "UDDI Technical White Paper". Looks like they could come up with the USIP
spec as well.

		Just speculation, no inside information. Actually I do not know anybody at
Microsoft/Ariba/IBM ;-0

	6. Once again, they clearly say UDDI as a *Technical* discovery Layer. I
look at our regrep as the *business* discovery layer which gives the BPs,
messages et al.

	7.	This has some features of and reminds me of another project I had worked
at HP, the e-speak.

	8.	They deal with four types of information :

		a)	Business Information : Simple data with yellow page like taxonomy
		b)	Service Information : Stuff like application program information,
technical web services information et al
		c)	Binding information
		d)	Specification Pointers & Tech finger prints

	9.	On the whole, it has more hype than substance (for now). I do not see
their claim that this will accelerate (actually "fuel the growth" is the
word used) B2B eCommerce. If only it were that simple ....

	10.	On the positive side, they do legitimize the use of regrep, dynamic
discovery, publishing biz information on a distributed registry et al. They
have some very crisp APIs to perform those functions, which is a big plus.
They have some marketing spin as well ...............

	cheers and let me catch some Z Z Z Z z z z z s

Note : These opinions are my own and do not in anyway reflect the
organization's views

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       |          |             Krishna Sankar
      :|:        :|:            Member of technical Staff
     :|||:      :|||:           Internet Commerce
 ..:|||||||:..:|||||||:..       (Ph) 408-853-8475
    Cisco  Systems Inc          ksankar@cisco.com
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           but Success is uncertain even when we do.
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