Developing Service-Oriented AJAX Applications on the Microsoft® Platform

Implementing REST Web Services Using ASP.NET 2.0 HTTP Handlers

A Web service is defined as an endpoint that returns data using standard HTTP mechanisms. Although .NET developers have generally associated Web services with SOAP-based services, you’ve already seen examples of REST services and POX (Plain Old XML) services using WCF. At times, however, you might want to process the raw HTTP request and response, and WCF might not be the best solution. For example, in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, WCF services aren’t supported through the out-of-the-box application. You might choose to implement HTTP handlers for performance reasons, or perhaps the service you’re providing doesn’t fit well with the WCF programming model. HTTP handlers can be mapped ...