Chapter 20. Working with SOAP services
This chapter covers
- ASP.NET SOAP services
- WCF SOAP services
- The WCF configuration files
- Error handling with WCF
Nearly every application built today, even using Silverlight, needs remote data to accomplish its goal. Business applications have to manipulate data directly, games often need to store high scores or submit achievements, and social clients must interact with their hub services.
Traditional desktop applications could handle some of those calls by directly connecting to a database. But Silverlight can’t directly connect to a client-server database. Instead, it must handle all transactions through an intermediary service.
Chapter 19 looked at the basics of networking, including how to access resources across the web. In this chapter, you’ll build upon that knowledge to deal with a specific type of network resource: the SOAP service.
This chapter begins by looking at the simplest type of SOAP service: the ASP.NET web service. ASP.NET web services are great for learning the basics. From there, you’ll move on to the type of service that has been seeing increased adoption: the WCF SOAP Service. You’ll use this service to explain how to connect to services and pass complex data, as well as how to deal with error handling.
By the end of this chapter, you’ll have the information you need to transmit and receive data and messages to SOAP services either inside your organization or across the internet.