Sure, you've heard about .NET... maybe you're a Visual Basic programmer for a small company, maybe you write SQL stored procedures for a huge company, or maybe you're just a Microsoft developer wanting to keep on the cutting edge of technology. In this article, James will explain exactly what .NET is, how it works, how we (as developers) can benefit from it, its many new features, and other .NET related information.
The Evolution Of Microsoft: .NET Explained - Web Services (Page 6 of 7 )
ASP.NET is a vital part of .NET for many reasons. The most important of these reasons is because ASP.NET pages act as the “super glue” to bind the Internet and Win32 applications closer together. Web services are considered to be part of ASP.NET.
Web services utilise the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) as their core communication protocol. SOAP is based heavily on XML. The purpose of a web service is to allow other developers to be able to access ASP.NET components, functions, or even pre-built web applications (that are configurable online) over the Internet.
Web services allow developers to keep the code and logic for their applications private, only exposing a minimal amount of methods and member variables to implement the web services functionality. This all ties back into Microsoft’s vision of “Software as a Service”. Web services are an extremely powerful and popular addition to .NET, and really do need to be experienced to be fully appreciated.
Overview of .NET
Over the last couple of pages, I have discussed the .NET architecture, its core components, features and benefits for developers like us. However, let me finish of by summarising everything I have talked about, in a couple of points:
ASP.NET allows you to choose which language you will develop in. Microsoft believes that choosing an actual language will simply come down to the type of lifestyle you are leading.
.NET has excellent Internet integration via ASP.NET and web services.
.NET applications can be developed quicker and easier thanks to tools like Visual Studio.NET
.NET applications are extremely scalable and efficient
ASP.NET 
What is .Net and Where is ASP.NET?
