Adapting Web services in a heterogeneous environment

For Web services to fulfil their promise in truly heterogeneous environments, the different base operations being included in Web services will need to appear in multiple Web Services with different names as well as different authorization and authentication mechanisms, different service level agreements, and even different formats. We describe service views and rule groups which together provide an adaptation layer at which these changes can be described and enforced. Service views include the ability to offer different views on WS components by altering the WSDL contract. Rule groups provide information directing these changes, as well as other policies to be automatically enforced underneath the services.