Implementing Web Services using the .Net framework and C#

Overview
This hands-on course provides a sound introduction to distributed business applications, and an understanding of how to create them using XML Web Services
On completion of the course you will know how to

• Use the System.XML library classes to process XML documents
• Use standard protocols such as SOAP and WSDL to publish web services
• Troubleshoot by tracing SOAP messages
• Exploit ASP.NET for rapid prototyping and implementation of Web Services
• Take advantage of multi-threading to develop scaleable and efficient services
• Use encryption and authentication to secure XML Web Services
• Update a database using a Web Service
• Serialise objects

Course Contents
Rapid intensive overview of XML

• Working with XML in .NET
• XML fundamentals
• XML schema
• XML namespaces
• XML Supported data types: simple, complex, binary
• Parsing and processing XML documents
• Generating XML documents
  • Using XmlTextWriter
• Converting DataSets to generic XML
  • XmlDataDocument

Conceptual overview and understanding of Web Services

• An overview of distributed computing architectures
• Interoperability of .NET web services with Java
• Web services facade application pattern

Consuming Web services

• Web Service Consumer Model
• Accessing web services - HTTP
• Exposing web services - WSDL
• Calling web services - the client proxy

Deployment and configuration of ASP.NET Web services from Visual Studio 2005

• Web service capabilities of .NET
• ASP.NET as a platform for Web services
• Building and deploying a Web service
• Generating client proxies and clients

SOAP

• Basic concepts underlying Remote Procedure Calls
• Overview of the SOAP protocol and SOAP messaging
• HTTP transport
• SOAP Action
• SOAP Exceptions and their handling
• SOAP faults
• Document-literal SOAP compared with RPC-encoded SOAP
• Debugging tracing and logging
  • Debugging via Visual Studio .NET
  • Exceptions and exception handling
  • .NET error logging mechanisms
  • SOAP extensions and their uses
• Marshalling and serialisation
  • Automatic vs. custom serialisation
  • Serialisation of value and reference types
  • Marshalling using data sets

Managing State

• State management scenarios
• Supporting transactions in Web services
• Starting and participating in transactions
• Transaction flow
• ASP.NET's Session State Facility
• Session State Configuration and Management
• Custom cookies
• Stateless Web Services and Tickets
• SOAP headers and state management

Asynchronous services Caching and Profiling

• Output caching, data caching and cache dependencies
• Caching as an alternative to stateful design
• Profiling a web service

Working with RSS feeds and Weblogs Web Services configuration and customisation Overview of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and the role played by Web Services in a SOA Web Services Clients

• Client types - thin, web and rich
• Multi-threaded clients
• Asynchronous invocation of web services
• Using Ajax to invoke web services

Security and Authentication of XML Web Services

• Potential vulnerabilities
• Web service authentication mechanisms
• IIS Security Features
• ASP.NET security
• Programmatic security
• Custom authentication
• Process security

Publishing and Discovery of Services

• UDDI
• WSDL and UDDI
• Visual Studio.NET and UDDI
• UDDI messaging and access to UDDI from .NET