Web services sharing among business enterprises

Abstract

Web services are self-contained, modular, distributed, dynamic applications that can be described, published, located, or invoked over the network to create products, processes, and supply chains. These applications can be local, distributed, or webbased. The services are built on top of open standards such as Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), HyperText Markup Language (HTML), Extensible Markup Language (XML) and Java. Software applications written in various programming languages and running on various platforms can use web services to exchange data over computer networks like the Internet in a manner similar to inter-process communication on a single computer. With web services, companies are able to host their services in a wider market and also connect to other companies. However, with business expansion also follows trust issues. In order to share Web Services in a business partner relationship, it is necessary to have a relation of trust. The purpose of this article is to review how Web Services can be made as a “network of trust” between partners and possible solutions that can be applied to address the problem. The study will undertake desktop literature review of literature on the subject. A range of web services trust issues and their causes will be identified and discussed. Further the article will attempt to propose possible solutions to address the problem.