In computer science a registry generally stores
information and allows other entities to retrieve it later (so it's not
evil and not invented by
Microsoft ;-). Registries are often used in different variations in
distributed systems like e.g.
CORBA or
Jini to provide knowledge about the whole system (e.g. all available objects or servers) to each member of the system.
Registries normally only contain information which has previously been 'registered' into them (therefore the name) and don't discover or
deduce information on their own, which distinguishes them from
network monitors,
databases and
expert systems.