This part of the book discusses the all-important topic of security. Given the reality of today’s open networks, it is just impossible to conduct business transactions in a networked environment without full security capabilities. The figure that follows shows where security falls in the Web services stack.

The Web services security stack is quite complete now, consisting of WS-Security, WS-Secure Conversation, WS-Trust, WS-Federation, WS-Privacy, and WS-Authorization. Chapter 12, “Security,” discusses WS-Security, and introduces WS-Trust. These two specifications provide a robust framework for end-to-end secure interaction between two Web service applications.

Chapter 13, “Advanced Security,” discusses WS-Trust in additional detail, and briefly presents WS-Federation, WS-Secure Conversation, WS-Privacy, and WS-Authorization. These specifications are in an earlier stage than those covered in Chapter 12. However, it is important to note that it is possible to support many useful and powerful business-to-business (B2B) and enterprise application integration (EAI) scenarios today using WS-Security, WS-Secure Conversation, and WS-Trust.