Web services developing in .NET is primarily enabled through .asmx files. .NET Framework makes Web services development a very simple task. Developing a Web service is really as simple as creating another .NET class with attributes.
Visual Studio .NET 2003 provides integrated development, project management, and debugging of Web services. In addition, Visual Studio .NET makes it quite easy to consume Web services using a simple Add Web Reference dialog box.
Returning DataSets as return values of Web service methods allows Web services to be used as an essential architecture for distributing .NET components in an application.
Web services can participate in transactions, but can only initiate a new transaction and cannot include other Web service invocations in the same transaction context.
Web services can be created and available either synchronously or asynchronously.
Web services extensions provides a set of extensions and APIs for making Web services security, routing, attachments, and policy using the WS series of standards.
Microsoft .NET provides a number of integrated tools and APIs for rapid building, debugging, and deploying of Web services by making Web services development as simple as developing a Web page.
