"You are holding in your hands my favorite book on Web services and .NET...What else can I say? Buy this book now, and be prepared for a new way of coding!"
—Keith Ballinger, Program Manager for XML Web Services, Microsoft

"If you've been searching for a book that goes beyond the Web services hype, distills the benefits of the actual platform, look no further, you've found the right one."
—Aaron Skonnard, Instructor and Author, DevelopMentor

Real World XML Web Services is the Visual Basic programmer's definitive guide to designing and building .NET Web services. It provides experienced developers with a comprehensive understanding of Web services, covering everything from basic concepts and solutions to interoperability problems.

This book begins with a concise and practical introduction to Web services and the foundation on which they are built, including Web Services Description Language (WSDL) and Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). Readers learn by example how to use each tool for developing Web services, starting with the SOAP Toolkit and the .NET framework.

Visual Basic programmers discover how to:
* Use XML Schema to define Web service messages
* Use SOAP for messaging and Remote Procedure Calls (RPC)
* Read and modify WSDL documents
* Build Web services with the SOAP Toolkit
* Create and invoke Web services using the .NET framework
* Implement SOAP headers and use SOAP Fault
* Develop interface-based Web services
* Handle data in .NET Web services including objects, arrays, and DataSets
* Use SOAP exreusable infrastructure for security and compression
* Use Universal Description Discovery and Integration (UDDI) at design time and run time
* Understand the architecture of other popular toolkits such as Apache SOAP for Java and learn how to solve interoperability problems

The book closes by walking the reader through the creation of a Web service with .NET and Visual Basic 6 clients. Real World XML Web Services empowers Visual Basic programmers to design and build the next generation of applications using Web services.