VB6 is DEAD!

[techgnome]

What technology is used to build the web services? Is it available in VS2010?

We currently use VS2013... but this dates back to VS2008.

They run in IIS - so basically it is an ASP.Net project

Look like this

Option Strict On
Option Explicit On

Imports System.Web
Imports System.Web.Services
Imports System.Web.Services.Protocols
Imports System.Web.Script.Services
Imports System.Web.Script.Serialization
Imports System.Data
.
.
.
Imports DocumentFormat.OpenXml
Imports DocumentFormat.OpenXml.Packaging
Imports DocumentFormat.OpenXml.Spreadsheet

<WebService(Namespace:="AWCService")> _
<WebServiceBinding(ConformsTo:=WsiProfiles.BasicProfile1_1)> _
<Global.Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices.DesignerGenerated()> _
<System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptService()> _
Public Class WebService
    Inherits System.Web.Services.WebService

    Dim g_prmSP As New Dictionary(Of String, SqlParameter())

    Dim fileWrtr As System.IO.StreamWriter

    <WebMethod()> _
    <ScriptMethod(ResponseFormat:=ResponseFormat.Json, UseHttpGet:=False)> _
    Public Function AddService(ByVal toddtype As String, ByVal fromddtype As String, ByVal fromwho As String _
                                                                                    , ByVal choice As Integer _
                                                                                    , ByVal objReturn As Dictionary(Of String, String) _
                                                                                    , ByVal addkey As String _
                                                                                    , ByVal username As String) As String
        'Return "<b>This is the content of resource <tt>someResource</tt></b>"
        Dim credDB As String = ""
        If username.Contains(":") Then
            credDB = username.Split(":"c)(0)
            username = username.Split(":"c)(1)
        End If

Called like this from JS in my case

            $.ajax({
                type: "POST",
                url: "WebService.asmx/" + strService,
                dataType: "json",
                data: strWebParam,
                contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8",
                success: function(msg) {
                    fncFinished(msg, sender, objWebParam);
                },
                failure: function(msg) {
                    fncFinished(msg, "failure", objWebParam);
                },
                error: function(msg) {
                    fncFinished(msg, "error", objWebParam);
                }
            });

Yup... pretty much. It's some pretty cool stuff. Even cooler is that because of our platform, I rarely have to get into the HTML or JS.

ah ok, so you are using ASP.NET, to perform services, just not used for the web-page piece (or so it looks like) I was a little confused there. What tool would you build your page in to host the JS functions? The only thing I have seen is the basic web-forms project in VS2010. I am guessing your response is going to say "any tool that can consume the web service can be used". This seems a bit much, I would think that browser is the best bet to target a wide array of devices. When we talk about .NET becoming deprecated, unless I am misunderstanding, why are we saying that ASP.NET is losing relevance if the services are being built on it? Or do we mean the web-pages as a method of consuming the service? If ASP.NET has no more relevance, then what are we building the sites with?

Correct, we're just using the web-service part of it... not for the pages. the pages are build dynamically by the services, then a JS controller takes the emitted HTML and stuffs it back into the page.

I launch a small HTML page - which pretty much loads the scripts and then starts performing AJAX calls to login and pull down more HTML or other JSON strings that help build the HTML further.

You never leave the page - the page continues to make AJAX calls and build up further and further.

I should also point out that once I started working with Android devices they simply call these same web methods from the Java code of an Android app.

But in reality the server side can be switched out easily - it's just a layer that passes DATA back and forth from stored procedures. Although I see .Net being relevant as a web service layer between WEB and SQL

In our case, we do have different pages, but each one is designed for a specific use, like Dashboards, Navigational Areas, detail pages, list pages, process... etc.


-----
The platform is the webservice portion of it... for those basic blocks, there are aspx pages... so we are talking about maybe a couple dozen. then with that platform in hand, and the accompanying SDK, we're able to build some pretty complex forms. Best part is we do it all through SQL, XML, and VB (or C# if we're feeling a bit feisty). So what we end up with is a few dozen webservices, and a couple hundred DLLs and a nice collection of HTML and JS files.

We use the XML files to define what should be on the page, what's editable, etc. we can then let the platform render it by default. Or, we can then attach an HTML file to it to fine tune the layout, such as displaying in columns or tabs, or a different order of the fields. If we need even more functionality, depending on what it is, we tinker with the VB code... or we add a js file and tinker with it on the client side. So far I haven't run into much wehre I've needed to do that.

-tg