Vista .NET Support Overview

Vista .NET Support Overview

Most of the Vista Web Services can be directly used by Visual Studio .NET projects as Web References. .NET developers will be using the auto-generated proxy classes as any local classes. Some web services, however, needs special solutions.

Overall, PowerLinks 2.0 Web Services can be divided into three groups depending on how they can be used in .NET:

1. Normal Web Services: all web services except FileManager and Mail.

Normal web services include Context, GradeBook, Calendar, AdminService, Version, and IMSQuestionAndTestService. They can be added to Visual Studio .NET projects as Web References without special operations, and proxy classes will be generated automatically from the WSDL.

Solution: First, find the WSDL of the services in interest by going to  http://vistaserver/webct/axis/and click on the "WSDL" link for the services you want. Second, in your Visual Studio .NET project, link the web service as a "Web Reference". A proxy class is then generated and can be used as if it was a local class.

2. FileManager Web Service

Due to the incompatibility of the binary data transfer protocols between .NET framework and J2EE, Visual Studio .NET isn't able to generate proxy classes for FileManager as Web Reference.

Solution: PowerLinks 2.0 delivers a .NET dynamic link library called VistaDotNetService.DLL, which can be found in the dotnet/lib directory of the SDK Client distribution. SDK developers can access all FileManager methods and Context methods once the DLL is added as a reference to their projects.

Please refer to VistaDotNetService.DLL for more details about using the VistaDotNetService.DLL.

3. Mail Web Service

Mail web service has the same problem as FileManager. Unfortunately PowerLinks 2.0 did not implement a DLL solution for it. There is a workaround to access most of the Mail functionalities by removing the problematic method getAttachmentContent().

Solution: The work-around for Mail web service requires a little bit more work: 

1) Download the WSDL to local computer

2)  Remove the getAttachmentContent method definition, and the DataHandler class definition from the WSDL

3)  Add the local WSDL file to the .NET project as a Web Reference

This article originally authored by Paul Monk on the WebCT DevNet