In the context of STAR Transport, Asynchronous means that a specific thread of execution sending a message does NOT wait for an application level reply before continuing on to other processing or completing execution.

For example, when a STAR message is sent asynchronously over HTTP, the thread of   execution waits only for an HTTP reply or HTTP error before continuing, it does not wait for a transport level Acknowledgment or a business level Acknowledgment before continuing; the environment executing the thread may expect a Transport level and or Business level reply to be received later as in inbound message in a completely separate and unrelated HTTP session.

“CEN/ISSS provides market players with a comprehensive and integrated range of standardization services and products, in order to contribute to the success of the Information Society in Europe.” (CEN)

A digital certificate is an electronic attachment issued by a certification authority containing credentials such as “name, a serial number, expiration dates, a copy of the certificate holder's public key (used for encrypting messages and digital signatures), and the digital signature of the certificate-issuing authority so that a recipient can verify that the certificate is real.” ( SearchSecurity.com )

A digital signature (not to be confused with a digital certificate) is an electronic signature that can be used to authenticate the identity of the signer of a document, and to ensure that the original content of the message is unchanged. The ability to prove that an original signed message arrived infers that the sender cannot easily repudiate it later.  

Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a standard way of representing data in human-readable structures to be exchanged between business partners.  XML was developed by the W3C.

Processing and altering data so only the intended recipient can read or use it. The recipient of the encrypted data must have the proper decryption key and algorithms to decipher the data back to its original form.

“Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) is a not-for-profit consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of open standards for the global information society.” (OASIS)

Payload is the data that is being transmitted within a message.

In the context of STAR Transport, Synchronous means that the specific thread of execution that sent a message waits for an application level reply before continuing on to other processing or finishing execution.

Web Services are a set of standards and protocols for exchanging xml-based data between Web-based applications or systems.

The Web Services Description Language (WSDL) is an XML-based language used for describing Web services. ( Wikipedia 2)

“WS-I is an open industry organization chartered to promote Web services interoperability across platforms, operating systems, and programming languages.” (WS-I)