Add the Sales Service

Purpose:

This process will create the class in the Web services project that will actually deliver the service.

Starting Point:

You have the Northwind solution open.  The Web services project has been added to the solution and is selected.

Steps:

  1. Choose ‘Add Web Service’ from the Project menu.
  2. Name the new service "SalesService" and save it..
  3. When the Designer appears, press F7 to bring up the Code window.  Note that the new class inherits from System.Web.Services.WebService.
  4. Expand the Component Designer Generated Code region and examine the code it contains.  Note that the class implements a Dispose method specified in its parent's class.  Collapse the region after reading the code.
  5. Examine the sample Web method.  Uncomment it and compile in debug mode.  Set a break point, make the Web services project the start-up project, and step through to see how the sample method works.  This will familiarize you with the basic process and the form of the output.
  6. Create a Web method to deliver the Region dataset, as provided by the public static method in your Region.  The method should look something like this:

    [WebMethod(Description="This method returns the dataset containing all of the columns for all of the regions.")]
    public DataSet theRegions()
    {
        return Region.theDataset();
    }
     
  7. Add another method to deliver the region name (RegionDescription) to a user that provides the Region ID.  That should look something like this:

    [WebMethod(Description="This method returns the name (description) of the region when passed the Region ID.")]
    public string theRegionName(int idOfRegion)
    {
        Region myRegion = new Region(idOfRegion);
        return myRegion.RegionDescription.Trim();
    }
     
  8. Compile and save, test and debug.

Rationale:

It's what we need.

Discussion:

Once you have built the business objects you need for a Web application, building a Web service is simply a matter of deciding which capabilities you want to deliver, then encasing those capabilities in a properly decorated Web method.

 

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