Tools Guide

Chapter 9 Registry Manager

This chapter describes the registry browsing and publishing functionality provided in SilverStream eXtend Workbench. It contains the following topics:

About UDDI

The business registry standard covering Web Services is UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration). UDDI is designed to give businesses a uniform way to describe their services, discover other companies' services, and understand the methods needed to conduct e-business in an automated or semiautomated way with remote partners. UDDI forms the basis for the registry management functionality.

To learn more about UDDI, see the complete standard at http://www.uddi.org.

About the Registry Manager

Workbench provides a Registry Manager, accessible through the Registries tab in the Navigation Pane, and a facility for defining registry profiles.

Workbench registry capabilities include:

Defining registry profiles
Selecting registries to include in the search process
Viewing business information on selected businesses in a given registry
Viewing information on Web Services offered by a given business
Searching for businesses or services within a registry or group of registries, optionally using extended query parameters
Publishing new services to a registry

Defining registry profiles

Registries are specified by URL and can be local or Web-based. Before accessing a registry in Workbench, you define a profile for that registry. Workbench comes with some predefined registry profiles.

To define a registry profile:

Select Edit>Profiles from the menu.

The Profiles dialog opens.
Select the Registries tab.
If you are editing or deleting an existing profile, select it from the Profile name list box and click Edit or Delete. If you are creating a new profile, click New.

Specify the following information:

Option	Description
Profile name	Name of the profile
Registry type	Type of registry (default is UDDI)
Inquiry URL	The URL through which the registry can be queried
Publish URL	The URL through which new services can be published to the registry
User name and Credential	The information (if any) that the registry provider assigned to you for publishing access
Include in Registry Search	Specifies whether you want to include this registry in the default search set

Click OK.

Once you have defined a registry profile, you can use the Registry Manager to browse the registry and you can publish services to the registry.

Browsing registries

The Registry Manager allows you to browse registries through the Registries tab in the Navigation Pane. There are two subpanes within the Registries tab: the Business Pane and the Service Pane.

Information displayed

The Registry Manager displays the following types of information.

Business Pane The business section of a registry might include these types of information:

Information	Icon	Description
Business name		Business name used in this registry
Description		Short phrase describing the business
Categories		Categories to which the business belongs Classification schemes come from at least three sources: NAICS codes for industry segments, UNSPSC for product and service classifications, and geographic information
Identifiers		Information about the business, such as a DUNS number
Services		A list of services offered by the business, such as Web Services callable via HTTP and other services such as sales and technical support contact information You can select a service name to display its details in the Service Pane

Service Pane A service entry in a registry might include these types of information:

Information	Icon	Description
Service name		The name of the service
Business name		The business offering the service
Description		A short phrase describing the service
Binding		The URL for invoking the service
tModel		Data describing the service A UDDI registry stores the data as a tModel, which is a set of name/value pairs; the tModel node may be followed by a description
Overview URL		The URL of a document describing how to use the tModel data For a Web Service, this is usually a WSDL document
Categories		Categories for the service The categorization has two parts: a name (for example, uddi-org:types) and a value (for example, wsdlSpec). The value wsdlSpec specifies that a WSDL document is available for the service. Other types of services can use other classification schemes.

Popup menus

Each pane in the Registry Manager has a popup menu.

Business Pane To view the popup menu for Business, place the cursor in an entry in the Business Pane and right-click. The following menu displays.

Menu item	Description
Copy Text	Allows you to copy text from the currently selected business tree node to another area or file
Clear Tree	Clears the pane of business information that you retrieved from your search
Advanced Search	Allows you to perform a sophisticated search by business For more information, see Searching by business

Menu item

Description

Copy Text

Allows you to copy text from the currently selected business tree node to another area or file

Clear Tree

Clears the pane of business information that you retrieved from your search

Advanced Search

Allows you to perform a sophisticated search by business

For more information, see Searching by business

Service Pane To view the popup menu for Service, place the cursor in an entry in the Service pane and right-click. The following menu displays.

Menu item	Description
Copy Text	Allows you to copy text from the currently selected service tree node to another area or file
Clear Tree	Clears the pane of service information that you retrieved from your search
Retrieve WSDL	Retrieves the WSDL for the selected service from the registry. You can also do this using the Retrieve WSDL button.
Delete Service	Deletes the selected service (if you have permission). Asks you to confirm before deleting the service.
Advanced Search	Allows you to perform a sophisticated search by service For more information, see Searching by service

Action buttons

The following illustration shows the location of the various action buttons on the Business and Service panes.

Searching by business

You search by business in the Business Pane.

To search businesses by name or keyword:

Enter a complete or partial business name or keyword in the text box below Business.
TIP You can also enter a group of business names separated by a vertical bar, which allows you to search for multiple groups of businesses. For example: XMethods|IBM|Sun.
Click the Search button (shaped like a downturned arrow).

While the search is underway, the Stop button (normally grayed out) is red. The search can take several minutes. To interrupt the search, click the Stop button; partial search results will display in the Business Pane.

A list of matching businesses appears in tree-view form. Each top-level node in the tree is a registry, each child of a registry is a business name, and below each business is detail information consisting of descriptions, categories, and services.

Clicking a service entry in the (upper) Business tree causes that service's detail information to appear in tree form in the (lower) Service Pane.

To set advanced business search criteria:

Leave the keyword text box blank.
Click the Advanced Search button (shaped like binoculars).

The Business Discovery Criteria dialog displays.
Select one of the search-criteria options:
- Business Name—Enter a complete or partial business name or list of names separated by a vertical bar (|) in the Starting with text box.
- Identifier—Select one of the following: D-U-N-S or Thomas Register (catalog names) from the dropdown list. Enter a key from the catalog (partial or complete) in the Starting with text box; this entry can contain numeric values and dashes.
- Locator—Select one of the following from the dropdown list: NAICS (North American Industry Classification System), UNSPSC (United Nations Standard Products and Services Classification), or GEO (geographical).
  
  Enter a key from the catalog (partial or complete) in the Starting with text box if you selected NAICS or UNSPSC; this entry can contain numeric values. Enter a country (region) abbreviation for GEO. If you selected NAICS or UNSPSC, you can click the ellipses and pick an item from a list of choices.
- Service Type Name—Select to search businesses associated with a particular tModel.
- Discovery URL—Enter an IP address or portion of an IP address for the URL in the Starting with text box.
Select search and sort options:
- In Sort By, specify whether to sort by name or date, in ascending or descending order. The most common technique is to sort by name (alphabetically) in ascending order or by date (numerically) in descending order. Sorting by date works within groups of businesses with identical names.
- In Options, select Ignore Case and/or Exact Match.
Under Profiles, select the registry or registries to search from the dropdown list. Those you specified in the Profiles dialog for automatic searching are already selected. To override the search list, select one or all of the registries in the list. To return to the original (default) registries, click Reset.
Click OK.

The search begins.

Searching by service

You search by service in the Service Pane.

To search services by name or keyword:

Enter a complete or partial service name or keyword in the text box below Service.
TIP You can also enter a group of service names separated by a vertical bar, which allows you to search for multiple groups of services.
Click the Search button (shaped like a downturned arrow).

While the search is underway, the Stop button (normally grayed out) is red. The search can take several minutes. To interrupt the search, click the Stop button; partial search results display in the Service Pane.

A list of matching services appears in tree-view form. Each top-level node in the tree is the registry that was searched; each immediate child of a registry is a service name; and children of the service node(s) contain detail information consisting of the business name associated with the service, a description of the service, and bindings for the service.

Clicking a service node in the (lower) Service tree causes that business's detail information to appear in tree form in the (upper) Business Pane.

To set advanced service search criteria:

Leave the keyword text box blank.
Click the Advanced Search button (shaped like binoculars).

The Service Discovery Criteria dialog box displays.
Select one of the search-criteria options:
- Service Name—Enter a complete or partial service name in the Starting with text box.
- Locator—Select one of the following: NAICS (North American Industry Classification System), UNSPSC (United Nations Standard Products and Services Classification), UDDITYPE, or GEO (geographical) from the dropdown list.
  
  Enter a key from the catalog (partial or complete) in the Starting with text box if you selected NAICS, UNSPSC, or UDDITYPE; this entry can contain numeric values. Enter a country (region) abbreviation for GEO. If you selected NAICS, UNSPSC, or UDDITYPE, you can click the ellipses and pick an item from a list of choices.
- Service Type Name—Allows the search of services associated with a particular tModel.
Select search and sort options:
- In Sort By, specify to sort by name or date, in ascending or descending order. The most common technique is to sort by name (alphabetically) in ascending order or by date (numerically) in descending order. Sorting by date works within groups of services with identical names.
- In Options, select Ignore Case and/or Exact Match.
Under Profiles, select the registry or registries to search from the dropdown list. Those you specified in the Profiles dialog for automatic searching are already selected. To override the search list, select one or all of the registries in the list. To return to the original (default) registries, click Reset.
Click OK.

The search begins.

A tree of matching services is built in the Service Pane. Clicking a service node in the (lower) Service tree causes that business's detail information to appear in tree form in the (upper) Business Pane.

Retrieving WSDL from the registry

After you have found the service you searched for, you can retrieve the WSDL definition for this service from the registry. For this you use the Service Pane.

To retrieve a WSDL definition from the registry:

Highlight the service node.
Click the Retrieve WSDL button in the Service Pane.

If a definition for the service exists, the WSDL Editor displays the WSDL information.

For information about the WSDL Editor, including different ways to view the WSDL, see Chapter 8, "WSDL Editor".

Publishing to a registry

When you have created a WSDL document in the WSDL Editor, you can publish it to a registry.

For information about the WSDL Editor, see Chapter 8, "WSDL Editor".

To publish to a registry:

Open the WSDL document in the WSDL Editor.
Click the Publish to Registry button on the toolbar.

The WSDL Publishing Options dialog displays.
Specify these options:
- Registry Profile—Select the registry you want to publish to.
- Business Name—Specify the business to associate the service with. Click the Lookup button to look up businesses in the registry.
- WSDL Publish URL—Specify the URL to which the service will be published.
Click OK.

If your service was successfully published, you see a confirmation dialog.

If the service was not published, you see a dialog describing the error.

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