.NET news » Web Services

The Caching Application Block's provider mechanism lets you create a custom provider that stores cached data anywhere you want. It was this that made me wonder if it was possible to cache data within or through a web service, which would allow the provider to cache its data almost anywhere—remotely or locally—without having to write specific code that is directly integrated within Enterprise Library.

The principle is simple enough. Instead of having the backing store provider within the Caching Application Block interact directly with the backing store (the usual approach, as implemented in the Isolated Storage provider and Database provider), the backing store provider simply packages up the data and sends it to a web service..

To consume external Web services in Atlas, you build a server-based Web service proxy to the service. The good news is that you can leverage Visual Studio and Atlas features to handle most of the work.

Explains how to manage a session and application state objects in ASP.NET Web Services.

Explains how Web services work and how to call it from ASP.NET.

Learn how to create a Web service in C#.

Online Article: Manage Custom Security Credentials the Smart (Client) Way

Both Internet and intranet applications often require a custom store for user accounts and roles. ASP.NET 2.0 provides an out-of-the-box provider model as well as a SQL Sever database just for that propose. Unfortunately, the only way to administer the credentials databases is via Visual Studio 2005, and only for local Web applications. This article presents a full-blown custom security management application that administrators can use. The application wraps the ASP.NET 2.0 providers with a Web service and even adds missing features. This article presents the design approaches, challenges, and techniques involved in developing such an application. The article also walks you through some powerful yet useful techniques such as interface-based Web services, reflection-based Web service compatibility, advanced C# 2.0, Web services security, and Web services transactions.