This post originated from an RSS feed registered with .NET Buzz by Christian Weyer. Original Post: Discovery channel: I know where you are, do I? Feed Title: Christian Weyer: Web Services & .NET Feed URL: http://www.asp.net/err404.htm?aspxerrorpath=/cweyer/Rss.aspx Feed Description: Philosophizing about and criticizing the brave new world ... Latest .NET Buzz Posts Latest .NET Buzz Posts by Christian Weyer Latest Posts From Christian Weyer: Web Services & .NET

Microsoft and friends (but without IBM) released the WS-Discovery specification as part of the metadata pillar of the Web services Architecture.

WS-Discovery enables advertisement and dynamic discovery of services on both ad-hoc and managed networks. Services may be organized in a hierarchical scope, and clients can query for services by type as well as scope without heavy administrative costs. This specification enables numerous design patterns for enterprise services; provides a discovery architecture for peer-to-peer services like buddy lists, websites, and file shares; and forms the basis for discovering network-attached devices such as printers, cameras, and PDAs.

Web Services Dynamic Discovery (WS-Discovery) specification was designed to:
  -Allow discovery of services in ad hoc networks with a minimum of networking services -- e.g., no DNS or directory  services
  -Leverage network services to reduce network traffic in managed networks where such services exist
  -Enable smooth transitions between ad hoc and managed networks
  -Enable discovery of resource-limited service implementations
  -Support bootstrapping to other Web service protocols as well as other transports
  -Enable discovery of services by type and within scope
  -Leverage other Web service specifications for secure, reliable, transacted message delivery
  -Provide extensibility for more sophisticated and/or currently unanticipated scenarios
  -Support both SOAP 1.1 and SOAP 1.2 Envelopes

Hm, smells a bit like DISCO, WS-Inspection, paired with Jini - and mixed with the current hype and movement of mobile devices. Added a little piece from the basic ideas of UPnP and Rendevouz.
And all in a sudden WS-Inspection is gone from the specification index page ... (which makes sense in that case).

OK, now we can discover any services on any devices (WS-Discovery), can discover services categorized by certain common and custom schemes and classifications (UDDI) - now we still need to be able to discover the runtime capabilities and requirements of services described through policies. Still desperately seeking WS-MetadataExchange ...