UDDI is the acronym of Universal Description, Discovery and Integration; this is an industry specification that defines a SOAP-based web service for locating Web services and programmable resources on a network, you can find all information related to this standard on UDDI.org web site.
On Microsoft’s world, UDDI is a Windows Component included in Windows Server 2003 (except on Web version). So you can implement a UDDI environment without to buy any additional software license; all software components needed are included in your Windows 2003 license: IIS 6.0, ASP.NET, .NET Runtime and, of course, UDDI services. For the database side you can use MSDE or SQL Server 2000/2005.
UDDI is one of the components that you need to implement in your ESB system (if you are implementing the Microsoft’s ESB offering).
The most recommended implementation is to install the web UI and API’s in a machine and the database in other one. In this case the UDDI services have to be installed on both boxes and we have to ensure that the communication between them across RPC protocol is enabled. UDDI uses RPC dynamic port allocation to randomly select port numbers above 1024, so it makes very difficult to configure your Firewall to enable the communication between both boxes, the best way to do it is configure your servers to use a static range of ports instead of a dynamic one. To know how to do it you can find the steps to follow on this other post on my blog.
In resume, we have to implement the following Firewall rules in our environment:
– TCP 1433 & UDP 1434. From web server to SQL one in unidirectional mode to enable the communication between web front-end and the databases on the SQL back-end box.
– TCP 135. In bidirectional mode to ensure the communication across RPC protocol.
– TCP 5000-5200. From web server to SQL one in unidirectional mode to enable the RPC protocol communication.
Other important thing to keep in mind is related to the platform that we want to use to build our servers because UDDI IS NOT COMPATIBLE WITH 64x BITS PLATFORMS. At least on Windows 2003 Server platforms, because Microsoft has announced that Windows 2008 64x Bits platform will includes UDDI Services as a Windows Component.
Angel Perez Palacios 