Patent ID: 8302017

Claim:
A computer-implemented method comprising: describing, with a first node using a standardized format, common web service properties associated with a web service, the common web services properties being properties shared among multiple different web services, wherein the common web service properties includes: a property associated with a homepage uniform resource locator (URL); and a property associated with a visually-renderable display that is expressed via a display tag, the property associated with the visually-renderable display comprising an icon property containing a link to an icon; describing, within at least a second node using the standardized format, specific functionality associated with the web services, the specific functionality including: at least one activity category configured to describe a type of service associated with the web service; at least one action definition associated with the web service, each action definition configured to describe an action a user can take associated with the web service, including a preview action causing display of a preview of an associated function, the associated function configured to execute responsive to a user selecting the display of the preview; and at least one input parameter to the web service; and making said first and at least second node web service descriptions available for one or more applications.