Kojiro Nakayama

Application of Web Services Security Using Travel Industry Model

Web Services Security (WS-Security) is a specification that protects SOAP messages to ensure end-to-end security for web services. WS-Security was approved as the OASIS standard in April 2004 and the first stage of standardization has been completed. Although the interoperability of WS-Security itself has been examined, business applications of WS-Security have not yet been fully investigated. Applying WS-Security to actual businesses is the next step. We conducted a large-scale demonstration experiment with web services using a travel industry model. We applied WS-Security to travel booking transactions and succeeded in ensuring end-to-end security by signing and encrypting credit card numbers. We give an overview of the experiment, point out the problems experienced and provide a possible solution. The experiment revealed that problems still remain with respect to communication via an intermediary.

Web services experiment using TravelXML: standard XML for electronic commerce in the travel industry

The travel industry requires computerized standardization of the information exchanged between travel agents, transportation systems, and accommodation facilities. Consequently, the Japan Association of Travel Agents and the XML Consortium are currently engaged in efforts to standardize an XML format (called TravelXML) for electronic commerce in the travel industry. A new business model for the travel industry was recently proposed and tested by the XML Consortium, using TravelXML and web services. 15 XML Consortium company members participated in the experiment. In this paper, we show the results of applying TravelXML and web services to a real business model through the experiment.