As we all know, building a better mousetrap is not sufficient to get the world to beat a path to your web site. As with any idea, you need to publicize the functionality that your web service makes available. Fortunately, there is a 'yellow pages' for web services and a set of functions that can be used to create, manipulate and search the entries. So when someone needs to find that stock market web service, they could browse this repository, searching for the functionality that they require.

The format used to add entries to these yellow pages is called the Universal Description, Discovery and Integration standard or UDDI. There are currently two main repositories for this information, one at http://uddi.microsoft.com/inquire and the other at http://www-3.ibm.com/services/uddi/inquiry.api. Ultimately, the goal of this evolving standard (and, when you get right down to it, web services in general) is to eliminate the human part of business transactions. The ultimate vision is that when a customer places an order with your company through the web service whose interface you have exposed through UDDI, the service will be able to search the directory to see that client has a web service that allows an invoice to be submitted electronically. Utopian vision? Currently, yes. Pipe dream? I don't think so. Give the IT community enough time, and this functionality will make its way into enough of the mainstream to be considered a requirement for 'serious' business.