Lotus Development Corp. was to use its DevCon 2001 developers gathering to announce the availability of a kit designed to let developers expose Web services on Lotus’ collaboration and messaging products. Lotus’ Web services enabling kit will include example code, white papers, and instructions for how to use existing Lotus product APIs to write a SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) interface for a Web service, according to Carl Kraenzel, technology strategist for worldwide development at Lotus, in Cambridge, Mass.
“We are coming to DevCon to demystify the buzzwords. We will let the developers sink their teeth into Web services right now,” he said. “With Microsoft, you hear them say ‘.NET is coming.’ We are saying to our customers, ‘The products and the APIs that you already have, you can use now. There is no reason to wait for a massive new infrastructure.’ ” For example, with APIs in the Knowledge Discovery Server, developers can use the kit to create a knowledge management Web service that allows a business partner to look up subject-matter experts in their company, Kraenzel said.
Microsoft brings keyword search to UDDI
Microsoft Corp. and RealNames Corp. teamed on a keyword-based searching service for the UDDI registry, adding one of the first new features to a directory that has been billed as a “Yellow Pages” for the Internet.
The UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration) registry is aimed at making it easier for businesses to provide information about their products and services on the Web as well as locate partners and customers. A number of registries that use differing protocols already exist on the Web, but Microsoft Corp., IBM Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. have joined the UDDI effort as a way to make business-to-business commerce on the Web work more smoothly. The vendors claim that thousands of businesses have signed up to use UDDI. Microsoft maintains one of the registry sites where companies can enter information about their business. The software maker is teaming with RealNames to make UDDI-related keywords accessible through the address bar in the Internet Explorer browser.
