How Far Web Services Tools Support OASIS Message Security Standards?

There is a great deal of interest burgeoning in the intellectual community regarding Web Services and their usage. Many writers have tried to bring awareness about some unconceived threats lurking behind the enticing Web Services. Threats due to Web Services are on an all time high giving an alarming knock to the Web Services security community. This led to the, Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) made some constraints mandatory in order to standardize message security and these constraints and specifications are presented through a document called WS Security -2004. This work is an attempt to check the support offered by various Web Services Tools available currently. It introduces the reader to Web Services and presents an overview of how far some of the tools have reached in order to make the Web Services environment safe, secure and robust to meet the current day’s requirements. A quantitative approach was taken to investigate the support offered by servers like BEA, Apache Axis etc. The conclusions drawn show that most of the tools meet the imposed standards but a lot more is expected from the web community and these tools; if at all the visions about safe and secure Web Services are to be realized