UDDI .NET SDK is used by adding a reference to the Microsoft.UDDI.SDK package in your Visual Studio .NET solution. This can be done via Project → Add Reference from the Visual Studio .NET menus. Adding references provides necessary information while compiling a program that uses certain functionality from a specific library.

Let’s take a look at the GettingStarted.cs to review how to use the UDDI .NET SDK APIs in the test application. After adding the reference to the SDK, you also need to include the following declarations:

using Microsoft.Uddi; 
using Microsoft.Uddi.Business; 
using Microsoft.Uddi.Service; 
using Microsoft.Uddi.Binding; 
using Microsoft.Uddi.ServiceType; 
using Microsoft.Uddi.Api; 
using Microsoft.Uddi.Authentication; 

These declarations ensure that the appropriate UDDI functionality is available to the application via the APIs. There is also a configuration file, app.config, that needs to be populated to run the .NET test application. Microsoft has migrated away from a text-based property file to an XML-formatted property file in the .NET environment. The properties take the following form:

<add key="settingName" value="settingValue"/> 

In the publish URL test example, the configuration values required are the UDDI UBR username and password. These are required because only registered and authorized users are allowed to publish to the UBR.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="Windows-1252"?> 
<configuration> 
  <appSettings> 
    <add key="uddiUserName" 
        value="[email protected]" /> 
    <add key="uddiPassword" value="****" /> 
  </appSettings> 
</configuration> 

The UBR URLs are not set in this configuration file. Those are explicitly stated in the application, but may also be in a configuration file.

publishURL.Items.Add("https://uddi.rte.microsoft.com/publish"); 
inquiryURL.Items.Add("http://uddi.rte.microsoft.com/inquire"); 

We are now ready to dive into the actual code and see how to test the communication point URLs for the UBR using the UDDI .NET APIs.

The APIs provided by the .NET SDK perform the same basic function as the UDDI4J APIs while being based on a different paradigm. The Publish methods are used to publish information to the registry. Publish.AuthenticationMode is required to force the authentication to happen at the UBR and not a third-party verification point. UDDI does allow integration with a stronger security mechanism as discussed in Chapter 10.

The API GetAuthToken processes and receives an authentication token from the UBR. Authentication tokens are evidence that an application has presented a valid username and password pair for use of the UBR. Subsequent interactions with the publish URL will require presentation of this token and, as such, it is important to obtain the authentication token prior to any other publish URL activity. The following code demonstrates the usage of these APIs:

Publish.AuthenticationMode = 
   AuthenticationMode.UddiAuthentication; 
Publish.Url = publishURL.Text; 
Publish.User = 
   ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings["uddiUserName"]; 
Publish.Password = 
   ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings["uddiPassword"]; 
GetAuthToken gat = new GetAuthToken(); 
gat.UserID = Publish.User; 
gat.Credentials = Publish.Password; 
AuthToken at = gat.Send(); 
appendToMessageWindow("UDDI Operator:"+at.Operator); 
appendToMessageWindow("
Authentication Token: 

" + 
   at.AuthInfo); 

Using the above code, we retrieve the authentication token as well as the UDDI operator name that we are interacting with. There are other Publish-type APIs that support the other publishing possible with the UDDI registry. These are discussed in Chapter 8.

The UDDI .NET SDK provides APIs for discovering resources (services, businesses, tModels) that satisfy a certain criteria. In the example to test the inquiry URL, we discover the uddi-org:inquiry v2 tModel using the FindTModel method. There are several UDDI XML messages for different types of discovery. These other Find-type APIs are discussed in Chapter 9. In this example, we focus on establishing connection with the inquiry URL.

The array of tModels returned can be displayed reading the TmodelInfos values. The relevant code is shown below:

Inquire.Url = inquiryURL.Text; 
FindTModel ftm = new FindTModel(); 
appendToMessageWindow("Searching for tModel 
   "uddi-org:inquiry_v2""); 
ftm.Name = "uddi-org:inquiry_v2"; 
TModelList tml = ftm.Send(); 

appendToMessageWindow("
The TModel Name: " + 
   tml.TModelInfos[0].Name); 
appendToMessageWindow("
The TModel Key: " + 
   tml.TModelInfos[0].TModelKey); 

Recall from Chapter 5 that the APIs essentially prevent the developer from having to manually format the relevant UDDI XML-messages. The XML messages created by the UDDI .NET APIs are very similar to those shown in the UDDI4J discussion.

There are two main UDDI4J APIs that we use to test the connectivity with the publish URL: UDDIProxy.get_authToken and UDDIProxy.get_registeredInfo.

AuthToken token = proxy.get_authToken(p.getProperty("userid"), 
   p.getProperty("password")); 
... 
RegisteredInfo ri = 
    proxy.get_registeredInfo(token.getAuthInfoString()); 
System.out.println("

UDDI Operator:"+ri.getOperator()); 

These calls get the authentication token that verifies the username and password and returns the UBR operator name you connected to. The get_authToken API forms the appropriate XML message to obtain an authentication token as discussed in the .NET example.

This API is used for UBRs or private registries that do not have some other method of obtaining an authentication token or certificate, or that choose to use username and password-based authentication. This method returns an authToken object that contains a valid authInfo object that is used in subsequent calls to publisher API calls that require an authInfo value.

GettingStarted.class also contains the UDDI4J APIs to test the inquiry URL. To test the inquiry URL, we discover the UDDI V2 Inquiry tModel: uddi-org:inquiry v2. To discover this tModel, we use the UDDIProxy.find tModel and other APIs specifically geared for processing tModel information.

TModelList tModelList = 
  proxy.find_tModel("uddi-org:inquiry_v2", null, null, null, 5); 
Vector tModelInfoVector = 
  tModelList.getTModelInfos().getTModelInfoVector(); 
for (inti=0;i<tModelInfoVector.size(); i++) 
{ 
... 
} 

The UDDIProxy.find_tModel API formats the XML message for locating a list of tModel entries that match a set of specific criteria. This method returns the list of tModels that fit your criteria. We discuss the find APIs in more detail in Chapter 9. This test application then displays the tModel name and key associated with it. A good test would be to match the returned tModel key with the uddi-org:inquiry_v2 key published in the UDDI specification. These two keys should match exactly.

As was the case in the .NET discussion, we explain the other important publish and inquiry UDDI4J APIs in the subsequent chapters.