Conclusion

Creating a Web service involves many of the same concepts and tasks you face when building any kind of application. You define the functionality and provide the logic necessary to create the service. You create classes, access other components, and utilize resources to complete the tasks. The code resembles the code within other applications.

However, by making the few modifications we’ve examined in this chapter, you can create a component that can be accessed remotely from anywhere on your local network or the Internet. Your Web service won’t know anything about the calling application. It will simply provide a function and return a result. The Web service can be accessed using several of the standards-based protocols, such as SOAP or HTTP.

Likewise, building the consuming application that will make use of the Web service is similar to building any other application. The consuming application can treat the Web service as though it were a local component with which the application will communicate. The .NET Framework allows you to establish a proxy that can be referenced within the project.

This accessibility creates additional concerns, such as securing the Web service for your users. Using the tools provided by the operating system, IIS, and the .NET Framework, you’ll be able to apply the desired level of security to your service to ensure that only those users that you authorize will gain access to your services.