Abstract:
Web services are a standards-based, loosely coupled new distributed computing architecture designed and specified to foster cross-platform program-to-program communications. Currently the Web services landscape is in an evolving state with core specifications almost mature, whereas more specific standards for complex business requirements have not been finalized. The principal goal underlying this thesis is to highlight the potential of Web service solutions as an enabling distributed computing technology by studying the role, standards and deficiencies of Web service technologies. The thesis study includes a state-of-the-art study on Web services technology and its radical changes on application innovation and development. Due to competing vendor specifications in the field of "Web Service Orchestration", a major part of the study is devoted to taking different viewpoints on existing business process languages such as BPEL4WS, WSCI and BPML so as to produce an extensive comparative study. As a general scheme for Web service adoption does not exist, the work is concluded with a financial Web service use case to investigate the feasibility of the Web services paradigm for application development in the financial services industry.
