Core Mechanisms for Web Services Extensions

Organizations expect Web services to make their information systems more agile, so they can better adapt to changes in business requirements. Hence, this technology focuses on interoperability and flexibility giving developers the ability to customize, reuse and enhance Web service functionalities as well as non-functional extensions such as security, transactions and reliable messaging. This paper describes the core mechanisms necessary to build Web Services extensions, regardless of the underlying platform. This contribution is based on the results of a comprehensive evaluation of existing implementations.