Patent ID: 7729955

Claim:
A method for a computing system to provide information regarding use of Web services, the method comprising: under control of an electronic marketplace provided by the computing system for selling and purchasing access to Web services, for each of multiple third-party Web service providers, registering a Web service available from the provider via the electronic marketplace in response to a registration request from the provider, the registration request including an indication of how to invoke the Web service and a specification of use conditions and a use price for use of the registered Web service by third-party Web service consumers; for each of multiple third-party Web service consumers, in response to a request received from the consumer to subscribe to an indicated one of the registered Web services, creating the subscription for later use by the consumer if the subscription request satisfies the specified use conditions for the indicated Web service and if the consumer has provided payment for the specified use price for the indicated Web service; for each of multiple requests received from third-party consumers to access indicated registered Web services, and if it is determined that the consumer from whom the request is received has a valid subscription for the Web service indicated in the request, satisfying the request by, interacting with the provider that registered the Web service to invoke the Web service and receive response information, the invoking using the information from the provider that indicates how to invoke the Web service; and providing to the consumer the received response information; and tracking information about the accessing of the indicated registered Web services by the third-party consumers for the multiple received requests, the tracked information for use in monitoring use of the registered Web services.