Programming .NET Web Services: Building Web Services ASP.NET and C#

by Alex Ferrara, Matthew MacDonald

Overview

Web services are poised to become a key technology for a wide range of Internet-enabled applications, spanning everything from straight B2B systems to mobile devices and proprietary in-house software. While there are several tools and platforms that can be used for building web services, developers are finding a powerful tool in Microsoft's .NET Framework and Visual Studio .NET. Designed from scratch to support the development of web services, the .NET Framework simplifies the process—programmers find that tasks that took an hour using the SOAP Toolkit take just minutes. Programming .NET Web Services is a comprehensive tutorial that teaches you the skills needed to develop web services hosted on the .NET platform. Written for experienced programmers, this book takes you beyond the obvious functionality of ASP.NET or Visual Studio .NET to give you a solid foundation in the building blocks of web services, and leads you step-by-step through the process of creating your own. Beginning with a close look at the underlying technologies of web services, including the benefits and limitations, Programming .NET Web Services discusses the unique features of the .NET Framework that make creating web services easier, including the Common Language Runtime (CLR) and the namespaces used in .NET programming. Filled with numerous code examples using the C# language, the book leads you through some of the more challenging issues of web services development, including the use of proxies, marshalling of complex data types, state management, security, performance tuning and cross-platform implementation. The book also covers:

• Creating and publishing your first web service
• The UDDI project, tModels and what they mean for web service publishers Securing web service applications

Written for programmers who are familiar with the .NET Framework and interested in building industrial-strength web services, Programming .NET Web Services is full of practical information and good old-fashioned advice.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780596002503
Publisher:	O'Reilly Media, Incorporated
Publication date:	09/30/2002
Edition description:	1ST
Pages:	414
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 9.19(h) x 1.01(d)

About the Author

is President of ProseTech, a software documentation consultancy, and a project manager at VoiceIQ (http://www.voiceiq.com/), a provider of software for interactive voice-enabled applications and services. Matthew is a coauthor of the ASP.NET in a Nutshell (O'Reilly), and a contributor to the C# in a Nutshell (O'Reilly) API reference.

Table of Contents

	Preface	ix
1.	Understanding Web Services	1
	Why Web Services?	1
	The Origin of Web Services	4
	The .NET Web Service Architecture	10
	Competing Web Service Technologies	16
	Other Technologies	17
2.	Creating ASP.NET Web Services	20
	Creating a Web Service: "Hello, World"	20
	The WebService Attribute	37
	The WebMethod Attribute	39
	Deploying a Web Service	45
	Using the .NET Compilers	50
3.	Consuming Web Services	54
	The Web Service Consumer Model	54
	Accessing Web Services: HTTP	57
	Exposing Web Services: WSDL	68
	Calling Web Services: the Client Proxy	78
	Creating a Client Proxy	79
	Working with the Proxy Class	87
	Consuming a Web Site Using a Screen Scraper Service	93
4.	Working with Data Types	101
	Working with Simple Data Types	101
	Working with Complex Data Types	110
	Using Complex Data Types as Arguments	119
	Passing Data with DataSets	125
	Using Binary Data	132
5.	Managing State	135
	The Great State Debate	135
	State Management Scenarios	142
	ASP .NET's Session State Facility	145
	Session State Configuration	148
	Example: Managing Session State	152
	Application State	157
	Custom Cookies	158
	Stateless Web Services and Tickets	160
	SOAP Headers	161
6.	Asynchronous Services	171
	Asynchronous Consumption	171
	Asynchronous Services	185
7.	Caching and Profiling	197
	ASP .NET Caching	197
	Simple Output Caching	200
	Data Caching	205
	Cache Dependencies	213
	Replacing Stateful Design with Caching	219
	Profiling Your Web Service	224
8.	Debugging, Tracing, and Logging	230
	Debugging in Visual Studio .NET	230
	Using Exceptions	233
	Logging Errors with .NET	239
	SOAP Extensions	247
	Advanced SOAP Extensions	254
9.	Security and Authentication	262
	Potential Vulnerabilities	262
	Web Service Authentication	264
	HS Security Features	265
	ASP .NET Security	270
	Programmatic Security	280
	Custom Authentication Techniques	289
	Process Security	297
10.	Publishing and Discovery	299
	Publishing	299
	UDDI	300
	UDDI Business Registries	302
	Registering a Business Entity	305
	WSDL and UDDI	309
	Visual Studio .NET and UDDI	321
	UDDI Messaging	322
	UDDI Access with .NET	326
	The WS-Inspection Alternative	330
	Customizing the IE Test Page	332
11.	Interoperability	334
	State of the Specifications	334
	Implementation Differences	336
	SOAP Interoperability	340
	WSDL Interoperability	342
	HTTP Interoperability and M-Post	343
	Known Interoperability Problems	343
	Maxmizing Interoperability	346
A.	Namespace Quick Reference	349
B.	Web Service Technologies	376
	Index	383