Software Confederations and Alliances

Global processes imply that the information systems have the architecture of virtual peer-to-peer networks of autonomous permanent services. It is typical for IS supporting e-government. We s h o w t h a t there are two v ariants of such n e t works: Confederations with quite stable relations (e.g. between the IS of the oces) and alliances with temporal links (typical for e-commerce). Alliances must apply message format standards like S O AP whereas confederations can (and often should) use domain-oriented message formats.