Hewlett Packard Company, IBM, Microsoft, and SAP have now deployed public version 2 beta implementations of the UDDI Business Registry conforming to the latest UDDI technical specification. The Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) Version 2 specification "expands UDDI functionality to enhance support for deploying public and private Web service registries. In addition to taking advantage of the public UDDI Business Registry sites, enterprises can also deploy private registries to manage internal Web services using the UDDI specification. Access to internal Web service information may also be extended to a private network of business partners. Improvements to the UDDI programmer interfaces enable developers to use complex queries in accessing data in UDDI registries; new query options include wildcard support and enhanced search across multiple categories. Version 2 supports business relationship modeling, e.g., modeling of large businesses, organizational structure, or various business units and services within UDDI. With the addition of HP and SAP as hosts of the UDDI Business Registry, there are now four browser-accessible points to find and manage UDDI information. First released in June 2001, the UDDI version 2 technical specification is based upon input from many of the 300+ companies now participating in the project."

UDDI Business Registry v2 beta implementations can be found at:

• Hewlett Packard Company: http://uddi.hp.com
• IBM: https://www.ibm.com/services/uddi/v2beta/protect/registry.html
• Microsoft: https://uddi.rte.microsoft.com/register.aspx
• SAP: http://uddi.sap.com [was: udditest.sap.com]

"UDDI enables a business to describe its business and its services, discover other businesses that offer desired services, and integrate with these other businesses. UDDI benefits businesses of all sizes by creating a global, platform-independent, open architecture for describing businesses and services, discovering those businesses and services, and integrating businesses using the Internet."

The Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) project "creates a platform-independent, open framework for describing services, discovering businesses, and integrating business services using the Internet, as well as an operational registry that is available today. The UDDI Community is comprised of more than 300 business and technology leaders working together to enable companies and applications to quickly, easily, and dynamically find, and use Web services. As a cornerstone of the emerging Web services architecture, UDDI will benefit businesses of all sizes by creating an open platform-independent specification."