ASP.NET Developer's JumpStart

XML Web Services Then and Now

There's not much new to creating and consuming XML Web Services, in theory. Developers have been using these exact techniques for years—but as you'll see, it used to be a lot more difficult than it is now.

Doing XML Web Services the Hard Way

In a normal SOAP-based Web Service application, the client application is responsible for creating the XML request and the SOAP envelope for transporting this XML across HTTP. On the receiving side, there must be a SOAP listener, waiting for SOAP requests. This listener will open the SOAP “envelope,” process the contents, and invoke the appropriate object on the server. It must wait for the object to finish its job and then send the XML result back to the client machine. The ...