ASP.NET 2.0 All-In-One Desk Reference For Dummies®

Chapter 6. Creating and Consuming Web Services

In This Chapter

✓	Looking under the hood of a typical Web service
✓	Creating a simple Web service to return a value
✓	Using different programs to consume a Web service
✓	Building a Web service that finds Elvis Presley

A few years ago, the public-relations departments of the big software companies touted Web services as The Next Big Thing in the computer world. The hype faded as people realized that the standardization of data exchange protocols was just an addition to the technology toolbox, not the answer to all distributed computing issues.

Web services are primarily a platform- and language-independent protocol for sending and receiving data over the Internet. The services let computer programs talk to other computer programs in a text format that people can read and understand. The data can be an inquiry such as the availability of a product or for a list of clients. A Windows server can request data through a company firewall without needing to know that the answer is coming from a Unix machine on the other side of the globe.

What is remarkable is the effort that Microsoft put into its development tools to make Web services easy to create and consume in the .NET platform.

In this chapter, you learn about Web services and then create some of your own. You put the Web services to work in sample applications — not all of which require the .NET platform.

All the code listings that are used in this book are available for download at www.dummies.com/go/aspnetaiofd ...