UDDI - has it ever lived?
Aaron Skonnard asked “Is UDDI Dead?” a few days ago, Wondering if WS-Addressing will reduce the need for it. Dave Bettin thinks that it can be sucessful, at least in the enterprise. Michael Erls thinks so too.
My take - UDDI hasn't lived at all yet. I'm not so sure it will. I agree with the opinions that if it does, it will be in the enterprise only, but I don't think it will live there either.
Why not? Well, at several large enterprises, I've seen solutions already in place -- web services at well known points that serve up the endpoints for other web services. These are tied into a web app that lets people search for functionality based on keywords and categories that make sense in the business they have.
This solution allows developers to find the services they want, if they exist. It allows them to list and describe the services they create. It allows them to programmatically (via the webservice) find a service that they already know about. All using technologies and methods they already understand -- and indeed use on a daily basis.
Now, UDDI has a lot of cool stuff -- security, subsciption, good searching capability, blah, blah, blah... And UDDI v3 has fixed some issues (like multiple registry support, publisher keys, etc) but for most its simply overkill. They need 10% of the features -- why learn a whole new set of tools when a few hours gives them the framework that they need?
Since I've seen this succeed -- and haven't yet seen UDDI deployed in an enterprise -- I'm wondering if UDDI has ever lived. And from my experience, its future is bleak as well.
cross-posted from Philip Rieck's full blog