Abstract: A system and method comprising a client-side manager component that manages access points (such as URLs) to distributed services for client applications. The client application hosts the client-side manager, and specifies criteria for a service. The manager component uses the criteria to query a service registry, such as a UDDI-based registry, and caches the returned list. To use a service, the client calls the manager component on a defined interface, and the manager component returns one of the cached access points. The cached access points may be returned based on an ordering, such as to distribute requests among services. If the service fails, the client calls a failure-related method of the manager component with failure details, and retrieves a new access point. The manager component reports the error to an error handling service, whereby the error information may be used in a quality of service statistic at the service registry.

Abstract: A system and method for enabling UDDI client applications to interactively obtain taxonomy information from a UDDI server and thereby present that information to a user, such as to enable navigation through the taxonomy. An application programming interface is provided by which a client application sends a unique taxonomy identifier and a relationship qualifier (e.g., root, parent and/or child) to a server. The client may also identify a reference node within the taxonomy. The server receives the (e.g., XML) request message, and extracts the data to query a database based on the relationship qualifier (or qualifiers) and the taxonomy/reference node. Based on the query results, the server returns a response that provides relationship information to the client, such as information on root, parent and/or child nodes that satisfy the request. The client interprets the response to present the taxonomy, such as for user navigation through the taxonomy.

Abstract: A model for authentication and authorization of users and applications that use network services. A client requests a ticket by providing credentials (user ID and password), e.g., over HTTP/SOAP/XML in the UDDI framework. An authentication adapter in a receiving server deserializes the request into a data structure that provides access to the security ID and password attributes, and passes these attributes to an ID management system to perform authentication. The credentials also determine the user's or application's privileges. The authentication adapter constructs a ticket object for the client incorporating the privileges and other information, e.g., the security ID and a date/time stamp. The ticket object is serialized, encrypted, encoded for transmission and inserted into an appropriately-formatted XML message and returned to the requesting client. The client attaches the authentication ticket to subsequent service requests that require authentication.

Abstract: A system and method that manages and pre-optimizes incoming database queries by decomposing queries into component parts, and executing corresponding pre-compiled procedures. A requestor specifies search arguments and/or query options. Middle tier code cooperates with database code by decomposing the query operations into stages, one stage for each specified search argument. To improve performance, the stages are ordered such that the most selective searches are executed first, and if after any stage it is recognized that no results are possible, the search terminates without attempting further stages. As each stage is executed, a list of matching keys is maintained in the database. After completing the stages, the list is sorted as specified and returned to the middle tier, which then retrieves the details for each entity represented in the key list, and formats and returns the results to the client. Relatively complex queries may be submitted without executing ad-hoc queries.