Charging for information services in Service-Oriented Architectures

Industries are adopting Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) for multi-organisational federated information systems where there is synergistic value in combined services. By contributing his own information services to the federation, each participant benefits from integrated access to services provided by other participants. However, integrated information services for use by external customers, based on SOA, are rare. One reason for this is the absence of technical mechanisms for information providers to share in the financial rewards associated with the provision of integrated information products to end-customers.This paper explores issues associated with the design of charging mechanisms within SOAs that permit dynamic composition of services to achieve customer goals. It proposes a suite of service components that can implement charging functions and explains their application within an application scenario. The scenario concerns an integrated service that is of interest to customers in local government practice, sociological research, and real property investment.