Security and Licensing for Components of Web-based Information Systems

Modern information systems are increasingly built on Web-based and component-based platforms. This raises the need for a Web-based infrastructure to simplify the management and procurement of corresponding components. Special focus lies on the deployment and distribution of such software artifacts within the context of the World Wide Web to promote their reuse and therefore to save development costs. At the same time, the integrity of the overall system must not be neglected. The use of components from third-party vendors poses a potential security threat requiring additional care. Furthermore remains the issue of usage rights for the components and the data they provide. Flexible mechanisms can offer a huge range of different licensing models to be enforced on the runtime process. This paper presents an approach to deal with these challenges together with an implementation of a software system supporting component-based Web portals.