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Despite several efforts during the last years, the web model and semantic web technologies have not yet been successfully applied to empower Ubiquitous Computing architectures in order to create knowledge‐rich environments populated by interconnected smart devices. In this paper we point out some problems of these previous initiatives and introduce SoaM (Smart Objects Awareness and Adaptation Model), an architecture for designing and seamlessly deploying web‐powered context‐aware semantic gadgets. Implementation and evaluation details of SoaM are also provided in order to identify future research challenges.

This paper seeks to investigate how the concept of a trust level is used in the access control policy of a web services provider in conjunction with the attributes of users.

A literature review is presented to provide background to the progressive role that trust plays in access control architectures. The web services access control architecture is defined.

The architecture of an access control service of a web service provider consists of three components, namely an authorisation interface, an authorisation manager, and a trust manager. Access control and trust policies are selectively published according to the trust levels of web services requestors. A prototype highlights the incorporation of a trust level in the access control policy as a viable solution to the problem of web services access control, where decisions of an autonomous nature need to be made, based on information and evidence.

The WSACT architecture addresses the selective publication of policies. The implementation of sophisticated policy‐processing points at each web service endpoint, to automatically negotiate about policies, is an important element needed to complement the architecture.

The WSACT access control architecture illustrates how access control decisions can be made autonomously by including a trust level of web services requestors in an access control policy.

The WSACT architecture incorporates the trust levels of web services requestors and the attributes of users into one model. This allows web services providers to grant advanced access to the users of trusted web services requestors, in contrast with the limited access that is given to users who make requests through web services requestors with whom a minimal level of trust has been established.

This paper aims to review the literature on the utility of employing the construct of cognitive style in understanding behaviour in web‐based learning environments.

The paper initially examines whether the web architecture may be matched to an individual's cognitive style in order to facilitate learning, before progressing to assess whether different architectures influence a web users' internal representations of web‐based learning systems, as measured by concept map drawings. Other issues explored are users' web navigation and users' sense of learning community when receiving instruction via web‐based learning environments.

The studies reviewed indicate that cognitive style is a pertinent factor for consideration when assessing the success with which users engage with web‐based learning systems.

Some of the studies reviewed here are small‐scale and caution is urged in generalising the findings.

In terms of the practical implications, however, it is suggested that web‐based systems should be designed with consideration to individual differences in user characteristics, as this is related to the success with which users learn, navigate and interact socially in an online environment. However, it is concluded that more research is required in order to produce general rules relating cognitive style to the use of web‐based learning systems.

The findings from the numerous studies on the implications of considering the function of individual differences in using web‐based learning are notable and useful in the context of web‐based instruction.

The purpose of this paper is to revisit a decade after its conception the Representational State Transfer (REST) architectural style and analyzes its relevance to address current challenges from the Library and Information Science (LIS) discipline.

Conceptual aspects of REST are reviewed and a generic architecture to support REST is presented. The relevance of the architecture is demonstrated with the help of a case study based on the collection registration database of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.

The authors argue that the “resources and representations” model of REST is a sustainable way for the management of web resources in a context of constant technological evolutions.

When making information resources available on the web, a resource-oriented publishing model can avoid the costs associated with the creation of multiple interfaces.

This paper re-examines the conceptual merits of REST and translates the architecture into actionable recommendations for institutions that publish resources.

The World Wide Web has experienced explosive growth as a content delivery mechanism, delivering hypertext files and static media content in a standardised way. However, this content has been unable to interact with other content, making the Web a distribution system rather than a distributed system. This is changing, however, as distributed component architectures are being adapted to work with the Web’s architecture. This paper tracks the development of the Web as a distributed platform, and highlights the potential to employ an often neglected feature of distributed computing: migration. Argues that all content on the Web, be it static images or distributed components, should be free to migrate according to either the policy of the server, or the content itself. The requirements of such a content migration mechanism are described, and an overview of a new migration mechanism, currently being developed by the authors, is presented.

Security and accountability within the transportation industry are vital because cargo theft could amount to as much as $60 billion per year. Since goods are often handled by many different parties, it must be possible to tightly monitor the location of cargo and handovers. Tracking trade is difficult to manage in different formats and legacy applications Web services and open standards overcome these problems with uniform interfaces and common data formats. This allows consistent reporting, monitoring and analysis at each step. The purpose of this paper is to examine Transportation Security SensorNet (TSSN), the goal being to promote the use of open standards and specifications in combination with web services to provide cargo monitoring capabilities.

This paper describes a system architecture for the TSSN targeted for cargo monitoring. The paper discusses cargo security and reviews related literature and approaches. The paper then describes the proposed solution of developing a service‐oriented architecture (SOA) for cargo monitoring and its individual components.

Web services in a mobile sensor network environment have been seen as slow and producing significant overhead. The authors demonstrate that with proper architecture and design the performance requirements of the targeted scenario can be satisfied with web services; the TSSN then allows sensor networks to be utilized in a standardized and open way through web services.

The integration of SOA, open geospatial consortium (OGC) specifications and sensor networks is complex and difficult. As described in related works, most systems and research focus either on the combination of SOA and OGC specifications or on OGC standards and sensor networks. The TSSN shows that all three can be combined and that this combination provides cargo security and monitoring capabilities to the transportation and other industries that have not existed before.

Any computing architecture cannot be designed with complete confidentiality. As a result, at any point, it may leak the information. So, it is important to decide leakage threshold in any computing architecture. To prevent leakage more than the predefined threshold, quantitative analysis is helpful. This paper aims to provide a method to quantify information leakage in service-oriented architecture (SOA)-based Web services.

To visualize the dynamic binding of SOA components, first, the orchestration of components is modeled. The modeling helps to information-theoretically quantify information leakage in SOA-based Web services. Then, the paper considers the non-interference policy in a global way to quantify information leakage. It considers not only variables which interfere with security sensitive content but also other architectural parameters to quantify leakage in Web services. To illustrate the attacker’s ability, a strong threat model has been proposed in the paper.

The paper finds that information leakage can be quantified in SOA-based Web services by considering parameters that interfere with security sensitive content and information theory. A hypothetical case study scenario of flight ticket booking Web services has been considered in the present paper in which leakage of 18.89 per cent information is calculated.

The paper shows that it is practically possible to quantify information leakage in SOA-based Web services. While modeling the SOA-based Web services, it will be of help to architects to identify parameters which may cause the leakage of secret contents.

This paper aims to initiate a timely discussion about the epistemological advantages of Web 2.0 as a non‐foundational network‐centric learning space in higher education.

A philosophical analysis of the underpinning design principles of Web 2.0 social media and of conventional “foundational” and emergent “non‐foundational” learning and which uses Wikipedia as a case study.

For academics in higher education to take a more informed approach to the use of Web 2.0 in formal learning settings and begin to consider integrating Web 2.0's architecture of participation with a non‐foundational architecture of learning, focused on acculturation into networks of practice.

The paper argues that the continuing dominance and therefore likely application of conventional old paradigm foundational learning theory will work against the grain of, if not undermine, the powerful affordances Web 2.0 social media provides for learning focused on social interaction and collaborative knowledge construction. The paper puts the case for non‐foundational learning and draws attention to the importance of aligning Web 2.0's architecture of participation with a non‐foundational architecture of acculturation as the latter is better epistemologically placed to more fully realise the potential of Web 2.0 to position students on trajectories of acculturation into their new networks of practice.

This paper exposes the epistemological dilemma Web 2.0's participatory culture poses for academics wedded to conventional ideas about the nature of knowledge and learning as is, for instance, clearly evidenced by their sceptical disposition towards or outright rejection of, Wikipedia.

Highly sensitive information pertaining to citizens and government transactions is processed in an electronic format, making information security a critical part of e-Government applications and architectures. Information security measures should ideally span from authentication to authorisation and from logical/physical access control to auditing of electronic transactions and log books. The lack of such measures compromises confidentiality, integrity and availability of information. Today, most e-Government projects in developing countries in Southern Africa Developing Community (SADC) face challenges in two main areas, namely, information security and application software integration. This paper aims to discuss and analyse the information security requirements for e-Government projects and proposes an information security governance model for service-based architectures (SBAs).

The current state of information security in emerging economies in SADC countries was researched. The main problems identified were the lack of software integration and information security governance, policy and administration. The design consists of three basic layers: information security governance defined at the strategic level of the government; information security policy/management defined at the management/operational level; and information security measures, implemented at the technical level. This section also proposes a policy for implementing public key infrastructures to protect information, transactions and e-services. A Token-Ring-based mechanism for implementing Single-Sign-On has also been developed as part of this study.

The main problems identified were the lack of software integration and information security governance, policy and administration. These challenges are causing e-government projects to stagnate.

The proposed approach for implementing information security in e-Government systems will ensure a holistic approach to ensuring confidentiality, integrity and non-repudiation, allowing e-Government maturity to progress from “interaction” to “online transaction” stage in emerging economies.

Research has not focused on developing a solution for emerging economies which are facing difficulties in integration software applications to deploy end-to-end e-services and to produce an underlying identity management architecture and information security governance to secure the e-services developed and deployed using an SBA. The work produced in this paper is specific to SBAs in e-government environments where legacy systems already exist. The work includes: information security governance defined at the strategic level of the government; information security policy/management defined at the management/operational level; and information security measures implemented at the technical level. This section also proposes a policy for implementing public key infrastructures to protect information, transactions and e-services. A Token-Ring-based mechanism for implementing Single-Sign-On has also been developed as part of this study.

The purpose of this paper is to formally verify the composition of web services to reduce inconsistencies in software architectures.

In order to check the web services composition, the authors use a model‐driven engineering (MDE)‐based approach and to achieve the formalization of web service composition in ACME and check the consistency of this composition, the authors introduce the pattern mediation to formalize web services composition with the ADL ACME, using the concept of architectural style of ACME. Subsequently, a scenario shows how this style can be used in ACMEStudio to detect inconsistencies. The example shows a web travel organization application.

The authors ensure reliability defined through non‐functional properties. To do so, use ACME was used to check assembling consistency of web service composition. In a second part, a SWC2ACME tool was designed and implemented to check if the web services meta‐model conforms to ACME model.

The paper describes a framework which has proven to be useful to ensure a safe design and execution of software architectures, specifically web services composition.