TR-IIS-03-011    PDF format

Abstract

Security is the major concern that refrains people from conducting commerce electronically. The security concerns related to electronic commerce (EC) includes transaction security and system security. We can partially address the transaction security issues by message distribution middleware such as simple object access protocol (SOAP), which is one of the information technology (IT) infrastructures that facilitate EC. It requires a comprehensive set of IT in order to address the system security issues where fault-tolerance technology is one of the core technologies to enhance the system survivability after attack. Based on our preliminary investigation, we conclude that the current SOAP architecture is lack of mechanism to build a highly reliable EC system. We propose a comprehensive fault-tolerance framework based on the current SOAP architecture in order to address the system security issues for EC. We consider this research is the continuing effort of our previous work on fault-tolerant CORBA, thought there are similarities and differences between these two technologies. We propose a standard recommendation that outlines a set of interfaces named fault-tolerant SOAP (FT-SOAP). The FT-SOAP includes four functionalities and three basic components. The SOAP architecture needs modifications/extensions to meet the requirements of FT-SOAP. Our design takes the advantages of SOAP features. The new proposed components in SOAP and the extensions of SOAP engine is backward compatible to non-fault-tolerant SOAP system. Our approach can be used to develop other supports on SOAP.

Keywords: fault-tolerance, web service, SOAP, distributed computing environment