WebComposition Service Linking System: Supporting development, federation and evolution of service-oriented Web applications

There exists a need within many large organizations and their partners to operate cross-organizational Web applications. This paper introduces the WebComposition Service Linking System (WSLS), a component-based and service-oriented system which makes extensive use of Web Services and other standardized Internet technology in order to support development, maintenance and management of reusable and configurable components for cross-organizational Web applications. A real-world application based around the WSLS support system which provides globally accessible core services, NUKATH -- Notebook University Karlsruhe(TH) -- is introduced. Our NUKATH project?s vision is that business processes of universities shall be established, supported, and provided by aggregations of high-quality, ubiquitously accessible, federated services. These federation-aware services could thence be the basis for reusable and standardized business building blocks of a university. Furthermore, these services could transcend the "business" borders of a university ? thus allowing for unique meta-structures of distributed universities supporting new collaboration scenarios in education and research.