Microsoft Releases Web Services Enhancement For Visual Studio .Net

The extension, which includes support for the latest Web services specifications, including WS-Security, WS-Routing and WS-Attachments, works with Visual Studio .Net and Microsoft's .Net Framework to allow developers to write a few lines of code to build more robust Web services.

The technical preview of WSE 1.0 was delivered in August.

Those Web service standards were first introduced by Microsoft in October 2001 as part of its Global XML Web Services Architecture and are also backed by IBM.

The security standard will enable developers to offer digital signing and encryption of SOAP messages across platforms and across domains. The standard was introduced by Microsoft, IBM and Verisign in April and to Oasis in June.

The routing standard, for example, will enable developers to build Web services and SOAP messages to travel serially or to multiple destinations along a message path, Microsoft said. The attachments specification allows developers to add attachments to SOAP messages.

Microsoft also announced that f5 Networks, WestGlobal and WRQ are among the development houses that will use the Web Services Enhancements 1.0 extension to Microsoft's Visual Studio .Net development platform.