Secure and Provable Service Support for Human-Intensive Real-Estate Processes

Abstract

This paper introduces SOAR, a service-oriented architecture for the real-estate industry that embeds trust and security, allows for formal correctness proofs of service interactions, and systematically addresses human interaction capabilities through Web-based user access to services. We demonstrate the features of SOAR through a DealMaker service that helps buyers and sellers semi-automate the various steps in a real-estate transaction. This service is a composed service, with message-based interactions specified in SSDL, the SOAP service description language. The implemented embedded trust and security solution deals with the usual privacy and authorization issues, but also establishes trust in ownership and other claims of participants. We also demonstrate how formal techniques can proof correctness of the service interaction protocol specified in SSDL. From an implementation perspective, a main new contribution is a protocol engine for SSDL.