Migrating from the Microsoft SOAP Toolkit to the .NET Framework

Summary: Take the next step in developing Web services by using managed code in the .NET Framework, and see how to incrementally transition your SOAP Toolkit-based Web service applications. (14 printed pages)

Contents
Introduction
The Basics… Your First Managed Web Service for SOAP Toolkit Developers
The Basics… Calling Web Services in Managed Code for SOAP Toolkit Developers
The Migration Approach
The Natural Solution: Drawing the Migration Line at the Wire
Another Migration Option: Doing as Little Work as Possible to Remove the SOAP Toolkit
What About SOAP Toolkit Feature ‘X’?
Conclusion
Related Books

Introduction
Since the Microsoft SOAP Toolkit released in June 2000, a number of advances in developing for the Windows platform—most notably the release of the .NET Framework—raised Web services to the status of a “first class citizen” in terms of application development. This article discusses the features of the SOAP Toolkit, the first Microsoft tool for building and calling Web services, and how to migrate SOAP Toolkit applications to use the .NET Framework.

The Microsoft SOAP Toolkit provides a mechanism for wrapping a COM object in a Web service and exposing its methods via SOAP messages. Similarly, you can take a WSDL file for an existing Web service and bind a proxy object to it, which allows the methods from the Web service to be called as if they are methods on the proxy object. While this functionality is useful, it can also be developed more easily using the .NET Framework, often with better results. I will show you how to accomplish the same thing in managed code using the .NET Framework, as well as look at ways to incrementally transition your Web service applications to the .NET Framework.