Using Web Services from Any Visual Studio Version

Chapter 5 demonstrates that your best (and perhaps only) technique of working with Google Web Services is the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) method. Visual Studio also relies on SOAP for access to Google Web Services. However, this environment is more robust. Visual Studio provides a number of additional tools that Office developers can only dream about.

Just because Visual Studio provides a robust development environment doesn't mean that all versions of Visual Studio are equal. You have a number of choices to consider when working with Visual Studio. The .NET version has a definite ease-of-use advantage not provided by previous editions. Instead of manually figuring out how to access the Web service, you simply add a reference to it using the technique discussed in the "Creating a Web Reference" section of the chapter.

I'd love to say that Visual Studio .NET is a positive advance in every way, but it isn't the right choice for some needs. This version of Visual Studio relies on the .NET Framework to perform tasks . The .NET Framework is a library of programming routines similar in purpose to the Windows API. The difference is that it also relies on a runtime engine in the form of the Common Language Runtime (CLR). Unless the person who needs your application has both CLR and the .NET Framework installed on their system, they can't run your application. In addition, the memory and hard drive requirements for the .NET Framework and CLR can be hefty for older systems to accommodate.

Visual Studio 6.0 has a distinct advantage in that it's familiar and you can produce native or Windows 32-bit Application Programming Interface (Win32 API) code using it. Every version of Windows can use applications created by this version of Visual Studio. Consequently, you have decisions to make when selecting which version of Visual Studio to use. Although all of the languages in this chapter can access Google Web Services, each language has features that make it better suited to specific needs.