Native Web Services, Part 2 - Build a WWSAPI Web Service

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With the Windows Web Services API (WWSAPI), you can connect your C/C++ client applications with web services. You can also create C/C++ server-side web service end-points. WWSAPI is new with Windows 7 (client) and Windows Server 2008 R2 (server). WWSAPI is also back-ported to all formally supported versions of Windows (client and server). The WWSAPI runtime library (WebServices.dll) is a native-code implementation of WS-* family of protocols for SOAP based web services.

WWSAPI enables several solution scenarios and benefits including:

1. Implement web services in native C/C++ code on both Windows client and server. C/C++ application developers have often requested this platform technology capability but were previously forced to write their own or interface their native-code solutions with managed-code wrappers.

2. Achieve interoperability with web services implemented using Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), ASP.NET XML Web Services, and even services implemented using non-Microsoft implementations of WS-* libraries.

3. Construct web services with minimal service startup time and minimal process working-set dependencies.

4. Use web services implementations in resource-constrained deployment environments.

5. Avoid native-management interop scenarios with potentially costly marshalling side-effects.

This is part 2 of a 2 episode series and focuses upon using WWSAPI to construct a web service. The example illustrates adding a web-service interface to a native (presumably legacy) application.  The demonstration provides a comparison between using a managed (WCF) interface and a native (WWSAPI) interface involving sorting algorthms with differing interop costs.

Find sample code and additional technical details at MSDN Code Gallery.

See part 1 of this series here.