Summary

Web services provide servers with the ability to offer a wide range of data to remote programs. In this chapter, you learned how to use web services to extend a user’s PC desktop by allowing a user to control files that reside on his or her PC from a remote location.

As you know, web services normally reside on a server PC. For a web service to retrieve files that exist on a specific user’s PC, the web service needs a way to interact with the PC. One way for a web service to access files on a remote PC is for the web service to interact with a Windows service that is running on the server. That Windows service, in turn, can interact (across the network) with a Windows service that is running on the user’s PC. The “local Windows service” on the user’s PC, in turn, can access and retrieve specific user files, sending the files back to the Windows service on the server.

By integrating web services with Windows services, you can create very powerful applications that provide users with access to vast amounts of data in a secure fashion. In Chapter 14, you will learn ways you can improve the performance of your web service and how to create asynchronous web service methods that call a client method after the method completes its processing.