Abstract: A first user is designated as an eligible shared data contributor. An authorized service component of the eligible shared data contributor is designated as a shared data publishing component. A data publication is defined. The eligible shared data contributor tags data managed by said publishing component for inclusion with the data publication. A second user is designated as an eligible shared data subscriber. The second user is associated as a subscriber of the data publication. The first user contributes to the data managed by the publishing component, and the second user is allowed access to the data managed by the publishing component based on the second user's subscription to the data publication. The first and second users may or may not be of the same licensee organization, thereby allowing intra as well as extra-organizational sharing of data.

Abstract: A remote object access facility is provided. The facility obtains description of objects hosted by a remote object server. The facility then facilitates creation of local instances of the remoted hosted objects for an application, and usage of the remotely hosted objects by the application through references to the “local” instances.

Abstract: In accordance with a first aspect of the present invention, an account creation/management (ACM) tool is provided to manage and administer administrator and user account creation and management for an application. In one embodiment, the ACM tool is equipped to facilitate administrators of service operators, service providers, and service consumer organizations to jointly administer and manage the creation and empowerment of corresponding service provider and service consumer organization administrator as well as user accounts. In one embodiment, users may have one or more roles, including administrator role(s), and administrator accounts are user accounts of users having such roles. In one embodiment, the ACM tool is also equipped to facilitate the logical creation of the organizations. In accordance with a second aspect of the present invention, a function offering creation/management (FCM) tool is provided to create, manage, and administer access to function offerings and services of the application.

Abstract: An application service environment is equipped to facilitate object/data sharing between users of different organizations through publication and subscription. The facilitation includes facilitating a publication subscriber user in identifying subscribed publication object instances of interest. The facilitation further includes monitoring for changes to publication object instances, creating and delivering change notifications to the publication subscriber users accordingly. In one embodiment, the publication object instance change notification service is implemented as a web service, with server side methods and client side logic to effectuate the desired selective notification for the multiplicity of users of the different organizations.

Abstract: An application service environment is equipped to facilitate formation of an application service agreement between a first and a second organization. The facilitation includes facilitating an authorized user of the first organization in creating an offer to form the application service agreement, with the offer comprising one or more offer data object instances having one or more attributes describing the offer, and the offer data object instances having association with one or more methods for an authorized user of the second organization to accept the offer or create a counter offer to the offer. The facilitation may further include facilitating an authorized user of the second organization using the first one or more methods to accept the offer or create a counteroffer.

Abstract: In accordance with a first aspect of the present invention, an administrator/user account creation/management (ACM) tool is provided to manage and administer administrator and user account creation and management for an application. In one embodiment, the ACM tool is equipped to facilitate administrators of service operators, service providers, licensee organizations to jointly administer and manage the creation and empowerment of corresponding service provider and licensee organization administrator accounts as well as end user accounts. In accordance with a second aspect of the present invention, a function offering creation/management (FCM) tool is provided to create, manage, and administer access to function offerings and services of the application.

Abstract: A first user is designated as an eligible shared data contributor. An authorized service component of the eligible shared data contributor is designated as a shared data publishing component. A data publication is defined. The eligible shared data contributor tags data managed by said publishing component for inclusion with the data publication. A second user is designated as an eligible shared data subscriber. The second user is associated as a subscriber of the data publication. The first user contributes to the data managed by the publishing component, and the second user is allowed access to the data managed by the publishing component based on the second user's subscription to the data publication. The first and second users may or may not be of the same licensee organization, thereby allowing intra as well as extra-organizational sharing of data.