XML Web services are classes or objects available on the Web that you can use in your applications programmatically as normal object-oriented calls. You can also publish Visual FoxPro COM Servers (OLEPUBLIC) as XML Web services to make information available to other clients on the Internet.

For example, you can use an XML Web service in your application that returns the weather for a given city when you call a method that returns the temperature when passed the name of the city.

Visual FoxPro support for XML Web services is handled through SOAP using an implementation of the Web Services Description Language (WSDL) compliant with WSDL version 1.1. Visual FoxPro includes Microsoft SOAP Toolkit version 3.0, which provides support for XML Web services through a set of extensions, and is also available from the Microsoft Web site. Visual FoxPro extends the functionality of the Toolkit; therefore, any future changes to the WSDL specification by the W3C propagate directly to Visual FoxPro when you upgrade to a newer version of the Toolkit.

Note:
You must have the Microsoft SOAP Toolkit installed to use XML Web services. If you plan to publish XML Web services from Visual FoxPro COM Servers, you must have Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) installed.

The SOAP Toolkit also provides objects that you can use to call XML Web services at low levels that interact directly with the actual SOAP messages. However, these objects are not directly supported by the Visual FoxPro extensions.

For more information on supported platforms, SOAP, WSDL, or the Toolkit, see the Toolkit online documentation or the SOAP Developer Resources Web site at http://msdn.microsoft.com/soap/.

In This Section

How to: Access XML Web Services: Describes how to locate, register, and use XML Web services in Visual FoxPro applications.

How to: Distribute XML Web Services: Describes how to specify a default location for publishing XML Web services, publish Visual FoxPro COM Servers as XML Web services, include components for deploying XML Web services, and generate XML Web service support files automatically when your COM Server is rebuilt.

Testing and Rebuilding COM Servers for XML Web Services: Describes how to generate XML Web service support files automatically when testing and rebuilding COM servers.

Deploying XML Web Services (Visual FoxPro): Describes files you need to include to deploy XML Web services.

Related Sections

Web Services and Components: Discusses how you can enable a Visual FoxPro application to work for multiple users by taking advantage of ActiveX controls and automation-enabled applications and adding international capabilities.

Automation and COM Servers: Describes how to you can extend the functionality of your Visual FoxPro applications without a lot of extra coding time by using automation and COM Servers.

Walkthrough: Creating XML Web Services with Visual FoxPro: Explains how to create and publish a Visual FoxPro COM Server as an XML Web service.

Interoperability and the Internet: Explains how to use OLE drag-and-drop to develop applications so you can move data between Microsoft Windows-based applications and within a Visual FoxPro application. Create documents for use on the Internet, or use one of two different Visual FoxPro run-times to create COM components (Automation servers) as normal or multithreaded applications.