Towards the “Web-based” Architectural Style

These days, a large percentage of software development is on the web and for the web. “Web services will become the predominant method for making information and applications available programmatically via the Internet in the near future” [9]. And in that context, one of the most important and resource consuming activities in the e-commerce industry today is the "webenablement" of existing software assets and the "aggregation" of applications. The intent of these activities is to make services that used to be available only within the corporate LAN accessible to partners and customers on the Web, and to provide complex value-added services, such as comparative shopping, order aggregation, and auctioning, on top of applications offering products or services.