UDDI HowTo: Create tModels with a custom key

When I first started working with UDDI registries, I came across an interesting use case, attaching data to a binding template. For those in the know, binding templates are UDDI's equivalent to a a specific company's service offering, such as a car mechanic's. The additional data might be performance statistics for the that mechanic, such as "I replace starters within 15 minutes".


Moving on, I had a registered service and wanted to add some data to it. This add on data is expressed as tModels in UDDI. tModels are nothing more than a key, name, value tuple. The catch with UDDI is that all tModel keys need to be registered before they can be used. I was discovered is that registering a new tModel isn't as straight forward as I thought it would be. The rest of the post is a how-to guide for creating new tModels in UDDI by first creating a tModel Generator. A tModel Generator is also known as a tModel Key Partition in jUDDI.


From first hand experience, this process is identical for most of the UDDI services that exist, both commercial and open source.
1) Identify a domain that the tModels are related to. Such as a www.mycompany.com. This will become a "partition" in jUDDI. If you reference the UDDI spec, this is actually called a "keyGenerator"

2) Using the Publishing web service to call "save_tModel" with at minimum the following items defined.
tModelKey = uddi:www.mycompany.org:keyGenerator (Note the prefix and suffix are required)

1. Name, such as My Company's Keymodel generator
2. A KeyedReference tModel in the categoryBag with the following defined:  ModelKey="uddi:uddi.org:categorization:types"
3. keyName="uddi-org:keyGenerator" keyValue="keyGenerator"
4. An authentication token ( see the Security API)

            SaveTModel st = new SaveTModel();
            st.setAuthInfo(key);
            TModel tm = new TModel();
            tm.setName(new Name());
            tm.getName().setValue("My Company's Keymodel generator");
            tm.getName().setLang("en");
            tm.setCategoryBag(new CategoryBag());
            KeyedReference kr = new KeyedReference();
            kr.setTModelKey("uddi:uddi.org:categorization:types");
            kr.setKeyName("uddi-org:keyGenerator");
            kr.setKeyValue("keyGenerator");
            tm.getCategoryBag().getKeyedReference().add(kr);
            tm.setTModelKey("uddi:www.mycoolcompany.com:keygenerator");
            st.getTModel().add(tm);
            

3) Send in the request.

            TModelDetail saveTModel = publish.saveTModel(st);
            System.out.println("Creation of Partition Success!");

4) You may now create tModels with keys start with "uddi:www.mycompany.com:" such as uddi:www.mycompany.com:somecustomkey

            tm = new TModel();
            tm.setName(new Name());
            tm.getName().setValue("My Company's Department");
            tm.getName().setLang("en");
            tm.setTModelKey("uddi:www.mycoolcompany.com:department");
            st.getTModel().add(tm);
            saveTModel = publish.saveTModel(st);
            System.out.println("Creation of tModel Department Success!");
            
            tm = new TModel();
            tm.setName(new Name());
            tm.getName().setValue("My Company's Authentication Method");
            tm.getName().setLang("en");
            tm.setTModelKey("uddi:www.mycoolcompany.com:authmode");
            st.getTModel().add(tm);
            saveTModel = publish.saveTModel(st);
            System.out.println("Creation of tModel Auth Mode Success!");

Note: tModel keys, at least in jUDDI, converted to all lower case. Some implementations support mixed case, but to be safe, always use lower case.