Although UDDI (universal description, discovery and integration) has not yet fulfilled its promise to become the public registration technology for Web services, the concept is gaining a steady foothold, a panel of uddi.org members said during a session at a recent conference, the Software Development Conference and Expo.
UDDI is designed to provide registries, either public or private, for registering and discovering Web services. Panelists from uddi.org, which is shepherding the technology, were sounded out about the progress of UDDI. The concept is still maturing, said panelist Joel Munter, senior software engineer at Intel Corp., following comments from panel moderator Brent Sleeper, a consultant at The Stencil Group, about registries allegedly “missing in action” and scant services being available. “There’s a reluctance to populate a public registry with Web services,” Munter said. “I don’t think [the lack of services registered] says [UDDI] is not successful,” said panelist Suzy Struble, manager of XML industry initiatives at Sun Microsystems Inc. Many Sun customers still are thinking about using UDDI internally first before considering utilizing public registries, she said. UDDI is well-positioned for use within firewalls, she said.
Microsoft sets plan to end support on VB 6
Microsoft Corp. has announced the planned cut-off dates for technical support of its Visual Basic Version 6.0 programming language.
The company said VB 6.0 users will be able to get full maintenance support until the end of 2005. After that, Microsoft said it will fix bugs and other problems in the software as a fee-based service through 2008.
IBM plans chips to speed Unix servers
IBM Corp. shed more light on future generations of its high-end server chips, saying it hopes to stretch the chips down to the lower end of its hardware line and alter the processor architecture to allow it to take on some tasks that are usually handled by software.
IBM rolled out its 64-bit Power4 processor last year and received praise from analysts for the strong performance of the chip in its top-of-the-line p690 server running AIX, IBM’s version of Unix. The Armonk, N.Y., company will build on the Power4 architecture in the coming years with the release of speedier and more complex Power5 and Power6 chips due out in 2004 and 2006, respectively, said Joel Tendler, program director of technology assessment at IBM.