OVERALL System Requirements

This book utilizes a lot of different software to make cross-platform Web Services work. This appendix focuses on where to download the various software needed to use the examples found on the CD-ROM.

Microsoft Products

Unfortunately, there is no free download for Visual Studio.NET, but Microsoft does provide the .NET Framework SDK, which includes all the needed functionality to compile the examples on the CD-ROM. Visual Studio offers the advantage that it makes things like creating a Web reference easier or making a Windows application quicker. Thus, it is strongly recommended that you purchase Visual Studio.NET to utilize the examples found in the book.

.NET Framework SDK

Available at:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/downloads/default.asp?url=/downloads/topic.asp?URL=/MSDN-FILES/028/000/123/topic.xml

Contains access to all the command line versions of the compiler for all the languages involved in .NET including C# and Visual Basic.NET. It also has tools for creating proxies and WSDL for Web Services.

.NET Framework Redistributable

Also available at the previous URL.

Only contains enough of the .NET framework to execute code created within the SDK or Visual Studio.NET. Although not required for any of the examples in the book, it may be useful for you to deploy any Web Services you create to a production server.

.NET WebService Studio

Available at:

http://www.gotdotnet.com/team/tools/web_svc/default.aspx

This is a tool that is an open source piece of software available at www.gotdotnet.com. Even though it comes from this Web site, all the contact information related to it is to Microsoft. So it is essentially a Microsoft product.

This is a great tool because it compiles the WSDL, creates a proxy, and then allows you to test client code against the proxy. This saves time because you don’t need to write a consumer from scratch to test your Web Service. It is also useful to test any Web Service that is Java based and that produces WSDL.

Web Services Development Toolkit

Available at:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/downloads/default.asp?URL=/downloads/sample.asp?url=/MSDN-FILES/027/001/997/msdncompositedoc.xml

This is an early software release from Microsoft that utilizes the up-and-coming security methods for Web Services. This includes using an X509 certificate to sign a Web Services request.

UDDI SDK

Available at:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/downloads/default.asp?URL=/downloads/sample.asp?url=/msdn-files/027/001/814/msdncompositedoc.xml

Provides an interface to the UDDI standard so that you can write applications and dynamic Web pages that query the repository.