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Why UDDI Will Work
Tim Smith of The Stencil Group pointed out a white paper that The Stencil Group put together concerning UDDI [?] . With UDDI's six month birtday, they say that it's building momentum, and postulate about why it will work in the end. Check out UDDI.org for other information as well.
Plain and simple, UDDI is dead in the water. First of all, the distribution method is just plain awful. What were they thinking? No self-respecting user, be they "techno-savvy" or not, is going to take kindly to this. Secondly, the way they've handled the publicity over the past six months has been nothing short of shameful. These people make Yasser Arafat's spokesmen look like professionals. Finally, if they want this to take off, they have got to make information about it a bit more available to the general public. As it is, UDDI is a bit mystifying, and one gets the idea that they like it that way.
All in all, this adds up to trouble for UDDI. So it's just had its "six month birthday?" Excellent; I give it another six months.
I'll be happy to offer advice on their bandwidth.
Here's my advice:
Get more.
Yes! I've been dying for another buzzword technology! XML was starting to lose it's effect!
Really. What are people thinking? All of this crap is based on an object oriented programming (OOP) ideal, at their core.
If you operate on the principle that OOP sucks (ie, is for shitheads), then every structure built on top of it is also going to suck by definition, not including it's own inherent suck properties.
It's truly mind boggling. I'm amazed at the industry support behind OOP, and further amazed at the support it has in Academia. What (self respecting) computer scientists take OOP seriously? I'm really curious here.
On one hand, modularization is good. Take UNIX, for example. Implementing common reusable routines that communicate hardware or complex networking protocols is helpful! But at the same time, it could hurt if it's interfaces are poorly developed (see Win32 API for an example). UNIX's modularity allows me to not have to write complicated device drivers and networking protocols just to say "Hello, world!" over network. On the other hand, the terrible interface to something like libjpeg, or PHP sessions, makes me want to pull my hair out and just implement it myself. Sure, OOP sounds good in concept, but most people are too fucktarded to make it work. Therefore, it saves us nothing at best and hurts us at the worst.
Friends don't let friends abstract everything away behind objects/methods.
Of course, UDDI will only be considered a failure if it doesn't make it's supporters a ton of money. Not if it makes for better software (quality? oh, yeah. sure).
Oy! That was a mistake. Does it help if I retract "Object Oriented Programming" and instead change it to "Object Oriented Paradigm"? Basic OOP concepts are fine and dandy. My gripe is with the drive to componentalize everything. OOP is just the face it's wearing.
Get a clue. The Win32 API is not OO. The term "spaghetti" comes to mind.
That was a case where components work. Where it's worth dealing with a huge component because it'll do difficult things for you, like talk to hardware and speak network protocols.
They don't work on a small level, which is what crap like .Net/SOAP/UDDI will be used for and promote.
Please. What self-respecting computer scientist can't see through media hype?
When you cut through the hype, what's left? It looks like bullshit to me. Exactly more of what we don't need. It's clearly my fault that it came out as a direct attack against object oriented programmer happy people.
Yeah I know I'm feeding the trolls. I just couldn't help myself, so this troll scores a "decent" 8/10 on my personal troll-o-meter.
I'm not sure if this is your sig or not, but attempting to shame someone (calling me computer illiterate) is much more trollish than me saying "The OOP is for shitidiots. Here's why."
Or at all for that matter.
It says you can download them, not view them.
Ever hear of DNS? I'd consider it a central, easy, reliable and timely. Granted, DNS isn't perfect. But the point is that it can be done.
Solution to blink tags: wrap them in another blink tag, with a javascript delay loop, so they cancel each other out
I think ``using their preferred applications'' (from the front page) is a key phrase, that and ``cross platform programming features are addressed by adopting early versions of the proposed Simple Object Access ProtocoL (SOAP) messaging specifications'' (from the FAQ) heavily pushed by Microsoft. Microsoft would like you to prefer their applications over everyone else's, and in particular anything that's not Java/CORBA.
Let's see... ``The UDDI project is not being "run" by any one company. Nor is it a standards body or a new company. Rather, UDDI is currently being guided by a group of industry leaders'' - that sounds familiar. If the past is any guide, this will be Microsoft spearheading a hyper-SMB protocol and half-pretending that it's an open standard created by ``industry bodies.''
``The UDDI Business Registry is open to all businesses and industry bodies worldwide'' - forever? Or will, say, an MSN/Passport membership number eventually be necessary? First introduced to make things easier, of course...
The companies in their ``communities'' page have a few... issues. There are no links from this page to these members of the supposed community. VirtualWorkz don't appear on search engines. MetalSpectrum have an Ariba rep on their board. If AgentWareSystems are the correct ``agentware'' (I'm having trouble finding an agentware with a matching logo), they list IBM (also part of UDDI) as a partner. And so on. How you say, ``Astroturf Movement?''
``I know who that is... It's the wolf! It's the wolf!!'' -- Lambsie
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Upload them to Hotmail, so Microsoft's ownership of them becomes official? Translate them to compressed PostScript and offend UDDI's sense of proprietaryness? Post ``improved'' copies that lead people to laugh at UDDI (even harder)? Upload over the top of them? This is an IIS 4 webserver; and if IBM were seriously involved, wouldn't it be WebSphere instead?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I do wish that Everything would just get a bit faster....
Who manages the site? Are they working on a 56k modem or something?
I'll be happy to offer advice on their bandwidth.
The post is a troll.
While IBM sold machines to Germany that they used to perform the deportations, IBM had no idea about the Final Solution. Even the scholar who released the book about IBM and Germany acknowleged this (I read about it in Newsweek a couple of months ago).
IBM stopped dealing with Germany after the invasion of Poland. This was well before the U.S. entered the war, and before the SS even planned their elimination methods. The plan was drawn up by the #2 SS man in 1941 (I think 1941...), we just covered this in my Genocide course.
I don't know why the post was moderated up. The poster's UDDI "Nazi" connection is crap. "their missions were allied on the mighty Axis of powers" hahaha
UDDI's single biggest proponent is IBM. This is incontrovertible.
IBM collaborated with Nazi Germany. Ipso facto, UDDI is tainted by Nazi attrocities.
IBM is also a huge corporate advocate of slashdot's favorite operating system. Does this make all Linux users Nazis as well?
Also, if you actually bothered to read the story that you linked to, you'd see that while IBM did sell Hollerith cards to Germany during The War, they were hardly Nazi sympathizers. The same technology can be used for good or evil. Dumbass.
ps. Yeah, I know, IHBT, IHL. Whoop.
Birtday?
Best Slashdot Co
- isn't it all about business-to-business?
no, it's not about b2b, and neither is it about web browsing and searching (ala google as the first poster stated).
put simply, UDDI is about applications finding other applications and services. something along the lines of:
i write a program that is a UDDI client and a SOAP client. my program accepts data from the user regarding travel arrangements. based on the input, i query a UDDI registry for services relating to travel. from the results of that query, my program can connect to the individual services (via SOAP) for price, availablity, etc. from there, the app can show the results to the user and allow them to select the most appropriate choice. then, the app could communicate that choice (via SOAP) to the web service and pay for the whole thing.
ok, my example is contrived and stupid, but it points out the really cool parts of SOAP and UDDI: all of the above can happen without ever writing code to a specific service. in fact, when new travel companies come on line, this program would automagically pick them up and use them in it's searches.
When you first visit the site, they have a download section to the right. It states:
The following PDFs are available for download only.
Download only? What else would I do with them?
Godwin's Law notwithstanding, that's just silly. I fully believe in the "never forget" aspect of remembering the Holocoust and fighting to avoid another one, but holding a corporation responsible for things done by the management of that corporation in a particular country, 50 years ago by not dealing with them in any way now is ridiculous.
Do you think that all Germans for the rest of human history should be punished? That we should never deal with them?
How about America, which was the home of the evil IBM corporation?
Remembering is one thing, but there is only so far you can punish groups for things done by tangentially related people far in the past.
-Puk the Jew
Indeed -- in fact, IBMers were considered so important to the US war effort that the War Department had a separate hierarchy of ranks for servicemen who maintained and supported the IBM systems that drove artillery and other ballistic weapons. So, for example, a Private First Class who worked in this capacity would carry the official rank of PFCI (Private First Class, IBM), and his rank insignia were marked with an "I" to denote his special status.
USA Today ran a good column about Tom Watson Sr. and the way the whole IBM-backed-the-Holocaust group is misrepresenting him and his actions. The whole thing is a mess, and does a disservice to Watson and the other IBMers who did so much to help the Allies win WW2.
Read my blog.
While you're at it, check out the excellent Uddi Uddi font foundry. It's at http://uddiuddi.com/.
UDDI stands for Universal Description, Discovery and Integration. Basically it's a super-duper yellow pages for business services that is heavily XML (and HTTP?) based.
Read more at the website, www.uddi.org
--
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
How do I cross references the dozens of synonyms and antonyms for products and services...
That is d*mned hard. I don't see it being addressed in any of these papers. SOAP is an RPC standard of sorts, completely irrelevant to solving a global YP hierarchy.
Answer me this - Who decides who goes where ?
I think GOTO (disclaimer: I work for them) has some kind of answer - you pay GOTO to get placed - you place yourself wrong, the market punishes you with a cost for each un-converted referral. This is somewhat different to the YP hierarchy problem.
Winton
For example: "UUDI". One question the average slashdotter might want to know up front is "WTF is UUDI?"
Please explain your acronym, "WTF?"
Bingo Foo
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taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
The idea that any kind of centralised service such as UDDI will ever manage to provide an easy, reliable and most importantly, a timely way of finding content online is pretty much preposterous to anyone who has ever used the net seriously. The net is just too anarchic and constantly changing for any such service to ever be reliable, and services like Yahoo have shown this, despite the millions of dollars of venture capital wasted.
Only search engines like Google have any hope of ever allowing people to discover information they need. The honeymoon days of web directories are over, and the technology has been shown to be the turkey it is. The net is a constantly changing place, and any static technology is doomed to failure.
Discovering a business partner is only a miniscule part of the b2b equation - think of the "business partner discovery" phase as reading about a person on a personals site. Merely reading about it doesn't constitute a successful "transaction". Similarly, just because GE or GM can locate my products on the web doesnt mean they can transact with me. The ability to transact depends on my e-biz infrastructure and my back office ERP system. Just type the words "laptop + 550MHZ" in Google. It will throw up hundreds of results. Does this constitute enough information for one to buy a laptop from these vendors or resellers? Also, what are the odds of industrial procurement managers typing in the words "concentrated sulfuric acid" or "3 inch valve" in Google? These companies have existing relationship with suppliers. It is the supplier who has to reach out to more customers, not the other way around. For a supplier to transact with a large corporation, it has to be of a certain size/credibility/revenue et al. No amount of web-based description/discovery will ever replace this. UDDI is old hat, being rehashed by a group of companies that are desparately trying to keep stock market's interest alive in the B2B sector. I have no doubts - b2b is here to stay and it will become a viable channel for companies to participate in. UDDI represents a really, small step in that direction.
As a developer working on a Web Services Development Platform, it is very important to me that UDDI and the web services revolution succeed. I think they certainly have that capability; Web Services are here to stay, and UDDI will probably become pretty useful in a year or two. However, there is no doubt that there are significant problems with UDDI as it now stands. Here are a couple, and you can email me if you're interested in more.
1) No fact-checking mechanism:
As it now stands, any business can go to one of the main UDDI providers (Ariba, Microsoft, and IBM), and register their company. This company could be legitimate, could be pornographic, or could be entirely false and fraudulent. Moderation and arbitration is always a tricky subject, as demonstrated by the last couple hundred WIPO cases, and this case is no exception. If I register in IBM's UDDI directory as "Microsoft Corporation," who decides that I'm not actually Bill Gates? If I register a fraudulent service, charge for it, and then screw my customers, who is liable? With a rotating management (executives from each of the three administration companies take turns being in charge), how are UDDI placement rules defined and enforced?
At the last UDDI advisory board meeting, the proposed answer was "self-administration." The administrators believe that as UDDI grows in popularity, there will be service providers offering background checks and ratings, similar to the Gomez reviews for B-to-C providers. I can almost accept this explanation, but it is certainly not in place yet.
2) No standardization of entries:
At its heart, the point of UDDI is to find services. These standards-based services are supposed to be available for use and integration by consumers, businesses, etc. Not only are the service descriptions buried beneath several levels of marketing, company information, and other useless junk, but there is also currently no standardization of entries. The standards are there, the services are there, but they aren't being referenced correctly....and that defeats the purpose. At the lowest level (the green pages referenced in the article), each Web Service should have a service description file, written in WSDL (Web Services Description Language), that specifies available methods, inputs, and outputs. Currently, the lowest level is a hodgepodge of text, Word documents, phone numbers, and a very few WSDL files.
Even if the services were available, the UDDI administrators have not released their web-based search interface yet. Visit http://www-3.ibm.com/services/uddi/find.htm to see an example....the "Find Services" button is unavailable, six months after UDDI's adoption.
We need some form of standardization, and it's not coming any time soon. At the UDDI advisory meeting, this question was pretty much blown off. There is nothing planned for the next two UDDI iterations that will fix this situation, and that means a couple of years at least. If the idea is to have our machines access and execute the services without user intervention, UDDI is a far cry from done.
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As it stands now, UDDI is relatively unusable. I have high hopes for its future, but I think smaller directories and private service repositories will be quite a bit more useful until UDDI gets past its toddler stage. In-fighting between the administrator companies will probably delay this process, especially since UDDI won't cause money to flow directly back into their pockets any time soon.
Creating another so called standard seems to be something no one definitive company, nor collaboration of companies seems to be good at, at this is mainly a yellow pages type consortium. What will end up happening is something similar to WSDL, where it will be thought up, boasted about for a while then end up dying slowly.
You could take a good like at bluetooth for example where its sometimes touted as thee thing, yet after some minor time in the spotlight it seems bluetooth will rot in idealand. Wrong too many independent efforts overshadow the one good idea, often confusing the shit out of everyone. Whats that saying? "Too many hands in the pot spoil the stew" something like that. Maybe an RFC should be drafted for something like this, sure its not technology based as most RFC's, but a standard should be drafted, and a consortium created where it would be the one and only, not some new hyped-up-only-to-last-for-a-few-months acronym.
I beg to differ on this. Think about the entire scope of this for a quick second. Microsoft, Sun, etc., most are competitors, coming together for a cause, one which could affect the outcame of their sales, yet their just going to wholeheartedly make something for the interest of the customer? Especially when MS seems to take their business lightly via way of security and the way its implemented in their products.
I personally don't buy it, and see it as another buzzword counting the days till its dead.
so sue me
360 degrees of Karma
I mean, the point in all this SOAP/WSDL/UDDI is that every big company out there can rent instead of sell software. Think about it, put it along with the recent Microsoft policy and the search for a viable business model that can compete with Open Source, and look for the only thing that a hacker cannot break into (so to speak ;).
If every company starts to rent their web services think about Amazon being profitable at last in many ways, Yahoo starting to recover from this year's nightmare, and so on. Online venture business have something in which to bet again, with (yes, now there is or could be) an affordable way to make money from Internet. And think about all the major companies (Sun, Microsoft, HP, IBM, order them as you wish) joining the race, inventing new crazy ways of selling new unexpected services. And see also the other side. Watch pr0n sites climbing on the UDDI structure somehow, and spammers inventing ways to exploit this new virginal system. And chaos. Expect chaos at starters.
I don't expect UDDI will die soon. With all this effort behind it, it can only go ahead. Be serious, if you have a packet routing system invented in a military/university network turning around the world various times, hey, this also might work. How many standards have you heard of that in six months make everyone speak about it? They want this system. Knowing that, it's only a matter of time.
If UDDI catches on, adherence will become mandatory. If that isn't good news to the legions of the unemployed tech workers, I don't know what is. Imagine if every one of those mom-and-pop shops suddenly realizes that their biggest customer will walk away unless they adopt this UDDI/ebXML thing...
Anotherwords, you people should be reading up on this and gaining some expertise pronto. Help spread the word.