Visual Studio® 2010 All-in-One For Dummies®

Chapter 6. Exploring Web Services

In This Chapter

• Creating a new Web service

• Testing Web services with GET, POST, and SOAP

• Using WSDL and UDDI to find Web services

• Consuming Web services in server-side code

• Accessing Web services with client-side code

Never created a Web service before? Never fear. This chapter shows you how to use Visual Studio 2010 to create a Web service, test it, and call it from another application.

Defining a Web Service

A Web service is a kind of Web application. Unlike regular Web applications, however, a Web service has no user interface. Generally, Web services aren't intended to be accessed by end users directly. Rather, Web services are consumed by other applications. For example, a Web service that returns the current temperature for a given city could be called by — or consumed by — a town's Web page.

Web services have two basic uses:

• Interface between systems: Many different kinds of systems run on different hardware and platforms. Trying to write software that allows all these disparate systems to talk to each other has been challenging. Many of the interfaces quickly become brittle: That is, any small change in the interface makes communication difficult, unreliable, or impossible. Web services use standards that overcome the difficulties of creating system interfaces.

• Reusable components: Rather than copy and paste code or deal with distributing components, you can make the features of your code available as a Web service.

Don't be fooled by the term Web service ...