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With the ASP.NET Framework, Microsoft has created an ISAPI application that enables the functionality of IIS to be extended using the .NET Framework. We examined a number of ways this is done within the Framework Class Library.

In addition to serving requests for Web Forms, the ASP.NET Framework also acts as the .NET SOAP Stack. A SOAP Stack is a process that listens to a well-defined network endpoint for incoming SOAP messages posted to the server. It maps these requests to a service implementation, and translates the results of the service into a SOAP response. In the .NET Framework, Web Services are so well integrated into IIS and ASP.NET that most people don’t even realize they’re using a SOAP Stack at all if they learn Web Services using the .NET Framework. For any other platform, you’d have to go out and pick a SOAP Stack, install it, and take specific steps to map types to service operations you want to expose.

This is true for Java platforms, and it is even true for exposing COM types as Web Services. Visual Studio .NET and ASP.NET make this so easy that it can be taken for granted by most developers. By mapping asmx files to types, by automatically handling requests for asmx documents in ASP.NET, by auto-generating WSDL documents, and by auto-generating client-side proxies, the Web Service handler built into ASP.NET hides all of the standards-based details of the underlying protocols and wire format in use. This can be a good thing or a bad thing. A service-oriented purist would shudder at the thought of it, and would advocate a “WSDL first” approach to service development. The other extreme would be to acknowledge the simple fact that if you need a method on a type exposed across your network, you can slap the WebMethod attribute on it, put an asmx document in front of it, and you’re done (as long as chunky statelessness is a given for the method design). Exposing your .NET types as Web Services vastly increases the reach of your managed code. If you’re in an environment where there are several platforms and languages in use, Web Services dramatically decreases the amount of time and churn spent integrating packages and applications.

By hosting your Web Services within IIS, you can also give them exactly the reach you want them to have. You may have services within a department, services exposed to the entire enterprise, and services exposed over the Internet to partners and vendors. You can even publish public services for general consumption. These can be subscription based or free. The broader the reach of your Web Services, the greater the chances you’ll want to adopt some of the WS-* specifications for functionality such as authentication, message routing, and transactions. You can do this with the Web Service Enhancements addon available for free and supported by Microsoft.

ASP.NET vps hosting is important since ASP.NET based website is bound to expand over time, and as websites expand there will be a necessity to upgrade web hosting services to something more suitable. The most important thing that you need to look for is the reliability and the connection speed, because ASP.NET shows its true potential with servers that have large bandwidths.