The Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) Project has announced the transition of its standards work to OASIS. OASIS will "serve as the steward for the UDDI project and activities and will continue development of the UDDI technical work" in a new technical committee. "This transition delivers on the goals laid out in the UDDI project's original charter. OASIS, a global consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of e-business standards, will manage the future development of the UDDI specification and related activities. Existing business registries will continue to be made available by registry operators. Under OASIS, the UDDI specification will continue to advance as a standard, and interested companies can continue to incorporate the specification into future business and software plans. UDDI also will benefit from additional expertise in shaping, developing and coordinating the fundamentals for open standards based business interoperability. 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 part of the UDDI project, a UDDI Business Registry has been established to allow businesses to publish and discover Web services."

From the announcement:

Along with the transition, UDDI.org also announced today the release of the version 3 specification. The new specification will be the basis for future development under OASIS.

"Version 3 provides the opportunity to make and mold UDDI registries for different purposes in different contexts, while maintaining a standard interoperable foundation," said Chris Kurt, General Program Manager, UDDI.org. "Additional features and enhancements such as those in the areas of security and internationalization are now included per requirements of implementers and end users, including the entire UDDI community."

The new version 3 specification offers a strong foundation for a diverse set of Web services architectures and delivers key enhancements, including:

• Increased security features: Support for XML-based digital signatures, and XML-based policies are now managed in UDDI operations.
• Improved Web Services Description Language (WSDL) support: Changes were made in the UDDI schema so WSDL-based web services can be found and run more easily.
• Multi-registry topologies: Provides the ability to take web services registrations from a local registry and promote them to a private or public registry.
• New subscription API and core information model advances: Allows UDDI users to receive proactive noticifations on services and changes to the UDDI registry.

"Delivering version 3 of the UDDI specification marks the culmination of two years worth of work by hundreds of companies," said Chris Kurt. "It's time for UDDI to take the next step toward standardization, and the transition to OASIS is happening as new features and enhancements appear that better meet the requirements of implementers and end users."

"OASIS has a nine-year track record of developing standards for the Web and facilitating their adoption in the business community. We welcome members of the UDDI community to OASIS and look forward to advancing the specification as one of the key standards in the Web services arena," said Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS.