A system and method for enabling UDDI client applications to interactively obtain taxonomy information from a UDDI server and thereby present that information to a user, such as to enable navigation through the taxonomy. An application programming interface is provided by which a client application sends a unique taxonomy identifier and a relationship qualifier (e.g., root, parent and/or child) to a server. The client may also identify a reference node within the taxonomy. The server receives the (e.g., XML) request message, and extracts the data to query a database based on the relationship qualifier (or qualifiers) and the taxonomy/reference node. Based on the query results, the server returns a response that provides relationship information to the client, such as information on root, parent and/or child nodes that satisfy the request. The client interprets the response to present the taxonomy, such as for user navigation through the taxonomy.