Metadata for trust in service-oriented architectures

Service-oriented architectures enable heterogeneous applications to be connected together in order to automate a business process. The shift towards this paradigm is largely due to the development of Web Service technologies. For interoperation, trust formation between Web Services is an important requirement. Currently, Web Services do not support differentiated forms of trust, which is required when interacting with either a well-known or unknown party. By inspecting information exposed as metadata, a Web Service can over time, gain a sense of the trustworthiness of other Web Services participating in its environment. In this paper, trust is discussed as it may relate to a service-oriented architecture environment that is implemented with Web Service technology. A novel approach to Web Service trust formation over information is presented. Trust is formed by using information such as metadata that is published through Web Service standards, defined over and above a Web Service interface.