The service discovery methods issue: A web services UDDI specification framework integrated in a grid environment

Grid technologies are clearly evolving towards the web services architecture as a means of structuring interactions among distributed software services. The web services-based architectural model distinguishes three main actors (provider, consumer and registry) whose interaction originates a web services process. Of these, the agent service plays an important role, particularly if compared to the analogous service in a grid architecture which collects information from resources and publishes it in a single location. The service discovery issue is compounded by a plethora of different types of service directories that could be implemented by using various technologies in distributed systems. The paper proposes a UDDI solution by means of a UDDI registry deployed in an existing Globus-based grid. It considers the benefits and issues of using private UDDI nodes in grid environments for indexing, searching and retrieving services. UDDI/LDAP integration is also described as a way to make use of the underlying grid testbed information service that is built on a hierarchy of LDAP directory services. The proposed approach furthermore serves to support the integration of the Service-Oriented Computing model as paradigm for distributed computing and e-business processing in grid environments.