TR-IIS-03-013    PDF format

Detail Implementation of FT-SOAP

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 four 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 similarity and difference between these two technologies. We plan to propose a standard recommendation that outlines a set of interfaces named fault-tolerant SOAP. We also expect to implement two prototypes, one based on Windows 200 and the other is based on Linux, in order to prove the concepts.