Patent ID: 7774456

Claim:
A method facilitating the classification of web services network traffic, comprising: discovering, at a network device, one or more web services based on web service invocation messages received at the network device; maintaining a tracking list data structure comprising, for each discovered web service, a web service identifier corresponding to the web service and a transaction count associated with the web service; incrementing, responsive to a message indicating a new web services network transaction, a transaction count associated with the web service identified in the message; presenting, in a user interface, one or more of the web service identifiers and corresponding transaction counts, wherein the user interface allows for selection of one or more web service identifiers; and configuring, responsive to selection of a web service identifier, a network traffic classification mechanism to identify the web service corresponding to the web service identifier, comprising: creating a traffic class identifier corresponding to the web service; creating at least one matching rule defining an attribute of the web service; associating the at least one matching rule to the traffic class identifier in the traffic classification mechanism; receiving an interface definition document defining the attributes of the web service; processing the interface definition document to identify at least one traffic class corresponding to the web service, comprising: defining a first traffic class corresponding to the web service; defining at least a second traffic class corresponding to a binding supported by the web service; and associating at least the second traffic class as a child traffic class of the first traffic class in a hierarchical traffic classification scheme; and configuring a network traffic classification mechanism to identify the at least one traffic class based on at least one attribute obtained from the web services definition document.