SharePoint 2007: The Definitive Guide

Chapter 26. Using SharePoint Web Services

Introduction

As one of its extensibility mechanisms, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) offers a number of Web Services. Web Services are a critical part of a service-oriented architecture, enabling remote and heterogeneous systems to interact effectively. The Web Services that come with MOSS provide an easy way to access and manipulate data within SharePoint while maintaining security and supportability of the system. They are fairly simple to use and understand, but due to their simplicity, they may not be as optimized as a custom set of Web Services, which can provide different sets of operations.

Warning

There may be a temptation to manipulate data stored in content or configuration databases, just because it seems doable. However, this is an unsupported scenario that could lead to corruption of data and destruction of your portal. Use the provided APIs or Web Services for integration instead of directly manipulating the database.

So, what are Web Services? In short, Web Services are a set of standards and protocols that enable software systems to exchange information via XML. Web Services have been "in the works" since 1998 under a variety of names—for example, XML RPC and SOAP. The main reason for the tremendous growth of Web Services is how easy it is to understand the protocols and formats involved. Interoperability is also a major selling point. Web Services, unlike many previous attempts at distributed computing, made it ...