SharePoint 2010 Development with Silverlight

10. Accessing SharePoint with Web Services

PRIOR TO SHAREPOINT 2010, the primary way to access SharePoint data from client-side technologies such as Silverlight was to use its web services interface. Introduced in SharePoint 2003, web services provide access to SharePoint content and shared services. The primary user of these services has been the Microsoft Office client, which provides deep integration with SharePoint for document management, meeting coordination, and a variety of other collaborative tasks. They are well documented on the MSDN web site, and though some have been deprecated over the years, most are still available for use.

Web services open up the world of SharePoint shared services that span many site collections and web applications ...