The OASIS international standards consortium announced that its members have approved the Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) version 3.0.2 as an OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. Advanced through an open process, UDDI is commonly regarded as a cornerstone of Web services, defining a standard method for publishing and discovering network-based software components in a service-oriented architecture (SOA). Version 3.0.2 adds the ability to affiliate registries in keeping with SOA’s emphasis on supporting a variety of infrastructural variations and providing a means to define relationships among a variety of UDDI registries. Although from its inception, the specification included concepts such as delegation and distribution among server peers, earlier UDDI definitions relied upon proprietary means of interaction. By contrast, UDDI v3.0.2 provides an open, standardized approach to ensure widely interoperable communication. Other v3.0.2 features include support for digital signatures, allowing UDDI to deliver a higher degree of data integrity and authenticity. Extended discovery features can combine previous, multi-step queries into a single-step, complex query. UDDI now also provides the ability to nest sub-queries within a single query, letting clients narrow their searches much more efficiently. www.oasis-open.org