...
2. Succesful solutions using Web Services, business cases.
I thought I'd take a moment to mention a simple case where Web services
proved to be the ideal solution for me.
I have several Windows SharePoint Services sites running on my server that
require data to be added to the Web pages from a local database. The main
reason for using WSS was to make building Web pages a simple and easy task
for inexperienced Web page designers, and getting them to connect to the
database and query the right data and format it properly for their pages
prooved to be a more complicated and confusing task for them than I had
anticipated.
Although there were other alternatives available, such as developing custom
WSS Web Parts, a simple Web service turned out to be an ideal solution. Web
page designers tell me exactly what data they want for the page, and I add a
Web service method to query the required data and return it in the exact
formatted strings they need.
After setting up the Web service page with separate classes for retrieving
the data and formatting it (which prooved no more difficult than writing any
..NET Web page), I am able to add new Web methods that provide whatever they
request in just a few minutes time, and all they have to do is call the
method.
3. Web Services role in a software development.
In this case it simplified the development process and is allowing quick
solutions to a variety of problems.
4. Web Services weaknesses, etc.
Supposedly, a Web service is going to reduce the performance of your
application, because of having to make the remote calls through a Web
server, and that was one concern while setting this up, but I've found it
hasn't really been a problem so far, even though I wrote the code using
synchronous methods. Eventually I will re-write the service to handle
everything asynchronously, but for now, it's not a necessary priority.
