Patent ID: 7165113

Claim:
A computer readable storage medium on which is embedded a computer program, the computer program comprising: accessing a remote registry storing a list of description files, each description fife being customized for a particular service provided by a computer and describes a pattern of message exchanges expected to be followed and documents types expected to be used for communicating with the computer to utilize the service; identifying a description file from the list of description files corresponding to a desired service, wherein a service provider providing the desired service published the description File for the desired service in the remote registry; retrieving an identification of the description fide, a location of the description file or the description file from the remote registry, wherein the description file includes a plurality of interactions describing a plurality of messages to be received and/or transmitted to use the desired service; and at least one transition identifying the order of executing said plurality of interactions, the at least one transition including a source interaction of said plurality of interactions and a destination interaction of said plurality of interactions, said source interaction being executed prior to said destination interaction, said source interaction specifying a document type to be used in the source interaction; using the desired service by directly exchanging messages with the service provider providing the desired service, wherein the messages are described in the plurality of interactions in the description rile, and the message exchanging is in the order specified in the at least one transition, and executing the source interaction of the plurality of interactions comprises determining whether a document is an instance of the document type to be used in the source interaction; and executing the source interaction in response to the document being an instance of the document type.