The ability to sign individual elements within an XML message rather than the complete message will be a critical feature for supporting multistage workflow processes in which an XML message is modifed at each stage. The ability to encrypt only specific elements within an XML message enables non-sensitive processing of the XML, something impossible if the complete XML message were encrypted. Entrust co-authored the XML Encryption Proposal that has since been submitted to a W3C Working group. The Simple Object Access Protocol is a lightweight XML protocol for the exchange of information in a general distributed environment and more specifically, in the Web Services architecture. SOAP provides a standardized XML envelope for the Web Service specific payloads by which services are invoked and how they return their service results.
SOAP also defines a set of encoding rules for expressing instances of application-defined datatypes.
Companies publish descriptions of the services they offer, along with instructions on how the services are invoked, to the registry such that other companies can discover, and ultimately, use them. Web Services Description Language is an XML syntax for describing what a Web service can do, where it resides, how to invoke it, and what it will return. Rather than integrating complicated PKI key management functionality into applications through 'toolkits', XKMS enables the outsourcing of this PKI functionality to remote Trust services. Entrust has created an online XKMS service reference implementation with which developers can experiment to become familiar with XKMS syntax and Web Service concepts. All rights reserved.