Thanks to everyone who attended my talk Web Services Behind the Music at the SAOs Software Association of Oregon Develo
Thanks to everyone who attended my talk "Web Services: Behind the Music" at the SAO's (Software Association of Oregon) Developer SIG last night.
Web Services: Behind the Music: They came out of no where. A pile of Web Standards with apparently superior intelligence rocketed on to the scene back in the late nineties with their break-through hit, SOAP 1.0. They made pop-culture history with their harmonic rendition of the WSDL 1.1 in the spring of 2001. Now, after a 5-year hiatus, theyre exploding back into the public eye with their hit series, Web Services Basic Profile 1.0. Edgy, clever, and irreverent, this spec pokes fun at the conventions of the software industry and proved that the boys were indeed "coming on stronger than ever before." But their popularity waned, and soon they found that fame carries a heavy price.
I'd said I'd post all the links to the utilites and such that I used. Also, please do visit the websites of Peter Drayton, where I absconded with a slide about REST as well as some exciting ideas about architecture, and that of Clemens Vasters, whose TechEd 2002 deck provided me a nice WSDL slide, and who has brought us a WS-Scurity implementation and other snazzy things in his Web Service Extensions for ASP.NET. (Email me if you want the deck, it's 1.8megs)
The Tools I used in the Presentation
- XSD.exe comes with the .NET SDK ASP.NET XSD Online Demo
- WSDL.exe comes with the .NET SDK. WSDL Explained
- YATT (Yet Another Trace Tool) from the fantastic Simon Fell
- XML Spy 5.0 from Altova
- Mind Reef's SoapScope 1.0 (just released!)
- OmniOpera from Kamiak
- GotDotNet's Free WebServicesStudio
- Microsoft's Free SOAP Toolkit 3.0
- Apache AXIS (SOAP Implementation)
- IDL2SDL (and WSDL) from Infotects
- Google's SOAP API and WSDL (.NET code included!)
- Calling Google from PocketSOAP with a VBS Script from Simon Fell
- Simon's WSDL Tools
- XMethods Web Services Directory
- Blunck's ieHTTPHeaders for seeing HTTP Headers within an IE Explorer Bar
And be sure to get Yasser Shahoud's book Real World XML Web Services 
A lot of nice comments were made after the talk that my focus on WSDL, its flaws not withstanding, and the underlying principle that you may want to (gasp) design your Web Services interface in isolation from it's implementation was a fairly useful thing. Most Web Services 101 presentation start with some .NET Wizard. I didn't use a wizard during the entire presentation, and actually never used Visual Studio for anything but a project file manager and to run the compilers. This isn't typically something beginners start with, but I think more beginners should. It's nice to see what's REALLY happening Behind the Music.
And for those of you at the presentation who were introduced to the WS and .NET Blogging group, start by asking yourself, "Is WSDL Too Hard?" and follow the thread around to see where it takes you.
About Scott
Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.
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