In a move designed to make it easier for companies to create partnership connections over the Internet, Bowstreet, provider of business Web automation solutions for plug-and-play e-commerce, today announced one of the industrys first implementations of UDDI, an emerging standard for finding and using any companys Web-based services. The implementation, available immediately, comes after Ariba, IBM and Microsoft unveiled a draft specification of the standard. Bowstreet has introduced jUDDI as free, open-source software that is available for anyone to use.
UDDI which stands for Universal Description, Discovery and Integration is designed to make it easy for businesses to create partnerships and new business models using platform-neutral application components called Web services. The initiative will create a distributed registry, or Yellow Pages, for publishing, finding and using Web services that companies wish to offer to the marketplace.
Bowstreets jUDDI (pronounced Judy ) is an open-source, Java-based toolkit for developers to make their applications UDDI-ready. jUDDI-enabled applications will be able to look up a Web service in a UDDI registry. A retail chain, for example, could use the toolkit to jUDDI-enable its online catalog. With jUDDI, the catalog could call another companys shopping cart and a third companys transaction Web service, creating an instant Web-based store. Companies will eventually create many connections like this, spawning business Webs, or dynamic collections of businesses, on a massive scale.
Bowstreet will incorporate jUDDI technology into its products, including the Bowstreet Business Web Factory. With the jUDDI-enabled Business Web Factory, users will be able to point and click to search, select and acquire Web services from the UDDI registry. Uses will then be able to combine these Web services, incorporate them with Web services within companies and in other directories across the Web, and customize and proliferate the results all without programming. This process automates the creation of business Webs, an emerging business model for 21st-century commerce.
