Editing Web Services Discovery (section)

{{Short description|Protocols for finding suitable web services for a given task}}
{{Confusing|date=December 2007}}

'''Web Services Discovery''' provides access to software systems over the Internet using standard protocols. In the most basic scenario there is a ''Web Service Provider'' that publishes a service and a ''Web Service Consumer'' that uses this service. Web Service Discovery is the process of finding suitable [[web services]] for a given task.<ref>{{Cite book | doi=10.1109/ASWEC.2014.27|chapter = Evaluating Technical Debt in Cloud-Based Architectures Using Real Options|title = 2014 23rd Australian Software Engineering Conference| pages=1–10|year = 2014|last1 = Alzaghoul|first1 = Esra| last2=Bahsoon| first2=Rami| isbn=978-1-4799-3149-1| s2cid=14951457 }}</ref>

Publishing a web service involves creating a [[software artifact]] and making it accessible to potential consumers.  Web service providers augment a [[service endpoint interface]] with an interface description using the [[Web Services Description Language]] (WSDL) so that a consumer can use the service.

'''Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration''' ('''UDDI''') is an XML-based registry for business internet services. A provider can explicitly register a service with a ''Web Services Registry'' such as UDDI or publish additional documents intended to facilitate discovery such as [[Web Services Inspection Language]] (WSIL) documents. The service users or consumers can search web services manually or automatically.  The implementation of UDDI servers and WSIL engines should provide simple search APIs or web-based [[GUI]] to help find Web services.

Web services may also be discovered using [[multicast]] mechanisms like [[WS-Discovery]], thus reducing the need for centralized registries in smaller networks.