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: 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: 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.