Section 15.7. WebServiceBinding Attribute

15.7. WebServiceBinding Attribute

A binding, as defined by Web Services Description Language (WSDL), is to a web service as an interface is to a .NET class. That is, it defines a specific set of operations. A WebService class has a default binding, which includes all the web methods in the class not specifically associated with a non-default binding. The WebServiceBinding attribute is used to identify non-default bindings, and also to set properties of the default and non-default bindings. (The WebServiceBinding attribute comes from the WebServiceBindingAttribute class, which is contained in the System.Web.Service s namespace.)

A WebService class can have multiple WebServiceBinding attributes, each specifying a different binding. If the Name property is omitted, then that attribute will apply to the default binding. This is the case for the boilerplate WebServiceBinding attribute inserted by VS2005.

There are several properties of the WebServiceBinding attribute, listed in Table 15-1. The first two, ConformsTo and EmitConformanceClaims , are inserted into the WebService class by default by VS2005. These two properties implement the interoperability standards specified by Web Service Interoperability Basic Profiles (WS-I BP) Version 1.1. The two valid values of the WsiProfiles enumeration are BasicProfile1_1 (seen in Example 15-4), indicating conformance with WS-I BP v1.1, and None , indicating no conformance claims.

Table 15-1. WebServiceBinding attribute properties

Property	Type	Get	Set	Description
ConformsTo	WsiProfiles			The WS-I specification to which the binding claims to conform.
EmitConformanceClaims	Boolean			If true , the binding will emit conformance claims when the WSDL description is published.
Location	String			The location where the binding is defined. The default is the URL of the current web service.
Name	String			The name of the binding.
Namespace	String			The namespace associated with the binding.

As you will see in the section on the MessageName property of the WebMethod attribute, there are circumstances under which creating a new binding, with a different name, location, or namespace is helpful.