A UDDI Specification Technical Committee has been formed within the OASIS UDDI Member Section to "continue work on the Web services registry foundations developed and published by UDDI.org." The new technical committee has been chartered to support: "specifications for Web services registries and Web service interfaces to the registries; replication or synchronization mechanisms across multiple implementations; and security facilities for access or manipulation of the registry and maintaining data integrity." Specifically, the OASIS UDDI Specification TC will: "(1) Accept as input the UDDI version 2.0 and 3.0 specifications published by the members of UDDI.org; (2) Produce as output a specification for Web Services Description, Discovery and Integration; this specification will reflect refinements and changes made to the submitted version of UDDI that are identified by the UDDI Specification TC members, and for additional functionality within the scope of the TC charter; (3) Liaise and/or forge relationships with other Web services efforts to assist in leveraging UDDI as a part of their specifications or solutions; (4) Coordinate with the chairs of the other related OASIS Technical Committees via Joint Committees as appropriate; (5) Coordinate with the UDDI Business Registry operators in order to get early feedback from their implementation experiences; (6) Oversee ongoing maintenance and errata of the UDDI specifications." Members of the OASIS UDDI Specification Technical Committee include BEA Systems, Cincom, Computer Associates, E2open, Entrust, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, IONA, Microsoft, MSI Business Solutions, NerveWire, Novell, Oracle, Perficient, SAP, SeeBeyond, Sun Microsystems, TIBCO, Verisign, webMethods, XML Global, and others.

From the announcement:

The OASIS standards consortium has organized a new technical committee to advance the Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) specification for Web services. UDDI enables companies and applications to dynamically find and use Web services using preferred applications. The OASIS UDDI Specification Technical Committee is the first committee created within the OASIS UDDI Member Section, a group formed as a result of the recent UDDI.org transition to OASIS.

Simon Yates, Director of Web Services Research for the Hurwitz Group commented, "The formation of the OASIS UDDI technical committee ensures that vendors and users alike will benefit from a consistent and unified approach to the development and implementation of UDDI. Under the umbrella of OASIS, UDDI and other foundation web service standards like WS-Security and ebXML are assured of an independent and reliable treatment."

"UDDI provides a foundation for the infrastructure needed to drive the success of Web services," said Tom Bellwood of IBM, co-chair of the OASIS UDDI Specification Technical Committee. "We are excited to begin work on standardizing the UDDI specification at OASIS, as well as developing and organizing the best practices that relate to its use."

"Advancing UDDI within OASIS will help accelerate adoption and benefit the entire industry," added Luc Clement of Microsoft, also serving as co-chair of the OASIS UDDI Specification Technical Committee. "Interest from OASIS member organizations in moving UDDI forward is high, and we look forward to input from a wide variety of companies."

UDDI joins several Web services standards currently being developed within OASIS. Other specifications include ebXML for electronic business commerce, WS-Security for secure Web services, WSIA for interactive Web applications, WSRP for remote portals, and others.

Participation in the OASIS UDDI Specification Technical Committee remains open to all organizations and individuals. OASIS will host an open mail list for public comment, and completed work will be freely available to the public without licensing or other fees.