Summary

In this chapter, you learned about creating and managing XML Web services. We covered the following topics:

• An introduction to how XML Web services work. XML Web services are nonproprietary and cross-platform.

• The underlying technologies that support XML Web services are HTTP, XML, XSD, and SOAP.

• UDDI is a mechanism for locating available XML Web services via an online registry system. It can be searched manually or through a programmatic interface.

• The properties and methods of the .NET Framework System.Web.Services base class, from which all XML Web services application classes must inherit.

• How to use Visual Studio .NET to quickly create an XML Web service. How to test XML Web services directly from a web browser.

• .NET Framework attributes are defined to mark WebService classes and WebMethods.

• Other attributes, such as SoapDocumentMethod and SoapRpcMethod, can determine how the XML wire format of the SOAP message is created.

• How static and dynamic discovery documents are generated, so that clients can locate XML Web services on a server.

• How Web Services Description Language (WSDL) provides clients with information on available Web methods, parameter requirements, and return values.

• How to use Visual Studio .NET to create both Windows and web-based client applications to consume XML Web services.

• How to call Web methods asynchronously from your client applications by using the AsyncCallback class.

• How to create and use custom SOAP headers to pass application-specific data along with an XML Web service request.

• How to create and use SOAP extensions to run custom processing code at different stages of SOAP message transmission.