TAS3 extends the State of the Art, as established by Identity Web Services Framework [IDWSF08], [HafnerBreu09], the Nessi Reference Architecture [NexofRA09], and Access-eGov Platform Architecture [AeGArch07]. [IDWSF08] includes a high level view, derived from documented requirements, and a low level implementable profile of various specifications backed up by interoperability and certification programs that verify interoperability in real life. [NexofRA09] only provides high level view and does not address identity issues (they even use term "federation" inaccurately, liable to cause confusion with Identity Federations) or interoperable protocol profiles - the definition of NEXOF Compliant Platform (NCP) is too vague and there are no interoperability or certification programs - [NexofRA09] fails to recognize clear prior art in [IDWSF08]. TAS3 extends the State of the Art by combining the web service, or SOA, framework with comprehensive authorization and trust management system, modelling domain, compliance validation (i.e. interoperability), and legal framework - in a whole that is concretely implementable. TAS3 addresses Long lifetime, Different Owners, and heterogenous IT environment concerns listed in [NexofRA09], Section 3.3. NexofRA discovery does not address discovery indexed by identity, though it does address discoverability by developers, which may be important for adoption.
[AeGArch07] architecture does not specify any concrete and interoperable implementation profile and its security details are vague. Never-the-less, they mention (but do not normatively reference) SAML SSO (no version), and WS-Security (no specific version or profile). They do recognize need for registry and discovery function, but do not discuss the interesting parts. Overall it appeared that their main ambition is not in architecture. They overviewed existing art and picked SOA and applied it to their problem domain using existing concepts without details research in the architecture area.
They use WSMO (http://www.wsmo.org/) based WSMX (Web Services Execution Environment).
The Web Service Modeling Ontology (WSMO) aims at describing Web Services in a machine understandable format, and thus enabling the automatic discovery, selection and composition of Web Service. As a result, WSMO provides a semantic to allow multiple organisations to cooperate for the completion of a service. For example, the Accredetation of Prior Learning (APL) process [TAS3D91PilotUC] requires multiple organisations to be contacted to build the portfolio of a candidate. WSMO is divided in four core components; namely ontologies, web services, goals, and mediators. The ontology element provides a syntax to describe ontological entities (e.g. concept, relation, axiom), which can then be used to represent the semantic of a domain of discourse. In other words, the ontology provides a common conceptualisation of the domain used the other WSMO components. The web service element semantically defines every aspect relevant to web services, such as functionalities and interfaces. For example, the functionality of a web service is expressed in terms of its capabilities and of the pre- and post-conditions associated to them. The goal element specifies the users' objectives to be fulfilled by the execution of one or more web services. Finally, the mediator element establishes interoperability between mismatched resources. For example, it resolves mismatches in heterogeneous ontologies by finding mappings between their respective ontological entities.