Benefits of XML Web Services Created Using ASP.NET
This topic is specific to a legacy technology. XML Web services and XML Web service clients should now be created using Windows Communication Foundation.
ASP.NET allows you to build and publish Web services using familiar programming constructs, such as methods, primitive types, and user-defined complex types. The .NET Framework also contains infrastructure and tools to create Web service clients that can call any standards-compliant Web service.
With ASP.NET, you can build Web services that use industry-wide standards for implementation. Since Web services are built on industry-wide standards, they can be communicated with across the Web using any client on any platform that adheres to these standards. Specifically, Web services employ the industry standards listed in the following table.
| Industry standard | Use in Web services created using ASP.NET |
|---|---|
XML |
The text format used when communicating with Web services using the SOAP protocol. When communicating with Web services using the HTTP-GET and HTTP-POST protocols, XML is used to encode responses. |
SOAP |
An XML-based message exchange protocol used for communication between Web services and their clients. |
Web Services Description Language (WSDL) |
Describes the contract of messages that a Web service can interpret when communicating with a Web service client. |
XSD |
Provides a universal type system, allowing data types to be defined and passed across platforms. For a Web service, XSD defines the structure and data types for the XML encapsulated within a SOAP message sent to and from a Web service. |
application/x-www-form-urlencoded |
A MIME type used for encoding parameters on a URL. This encoding is used for encoding request parameters to Web services using the HTTP-GET and HTTP-POST protocols. |
With Web services you can take advantage of the features of ASP.NET to build Web services that adhere to industry-wide standards. Specifically, ASP.NET not only takes advantage of performance enhancements found in the .NET Framework and the common language runtime, it has also been designed to offer significant performance improvements over ASP and other Web development platforms. All ASP.NET code is compiled, rather than interpreted, which allows early binding, strong typing, and just-in-time (JIT) compiling to native code, to name a few of its benefits. ASP.NET is also easily factorable, meaning that developers can remove modules (session modules, for instance) that are not relevant to the application they are developing.
See Also
Concepts
Building XML Web Service Clients