Windows Web Services API (WWSAPI)

[dilettante]

Here was something out of PDC 2008 I haven't heard mentioned yet.

The good news is that though it is being introduced as a Windows 7 technology the plan is to backport it to Server 2008, Vista, Server 2003, and XP.

Nikola Dudar's WebLog is a good place to begin. He has info, links to his PDC presentation, PowerPoint slides, C++ samples, etc.

In this session, I will introduce you to new Windows API for connecting native code to SOAP-based web services. My goal for this hour is to show you core layers of the new API and walk you through the programming model. Good understanding of Win32 APIs and programming around Win32 API would help with understanding demos in this session. Same goes for understanding of core concepts behind web services. However I will try to have a very short introduction into core terms and principles from the world of web services. If you do not know much about web services, no worries, I will go over basic things.

I wonder how accessible this will be from VB6? I don't expect COM wrappers right away but anything is possible. If not from Microsoft we might see 3rd party frameworks for VB6 based on WWSAPI, much like the popular PocketSOAP toolkit.

Wow, the performance slides comparing WWSAPI with WCF look good too, though RPC/DCOM still blows them both away.