SOAP Extensions
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The Web Service Software Factory is now maintained by the community and can be found on the Service Factory site. This content is outdated and is no longer being maintained. It is provided as a courtesy for individuals who are still using these technologies. Retired: November 2011 |
Developers can use the SOAP extensions feature of ASP.NET to interact directly with SOAP messages. By using SOAP extensions, you can intercept the SOAP message and insert your own code into the SOAP message pipeline, which allows you to extend the capabilities of SOAP. For example, features such as security, transaction management, routing, and tracing can be implemented by using SOAP extensions. The downside of this capability is that it reduces the SOAP message's ability to interoperate with other operating systems. In other words, other operating systems may not be able to handle a SOAP message that has been customized.
WCF does not support the use of SOAP extensions, but it does have other extensibility points that can be used to intercept and manipulate SOAP messages. For example, you can use a behavior extension to hook into the WCF Dispatcher with a class that implements IDispatchMessageInspector.
Recommendation
Avoid the use of SOAP extensions when developing new ASMX services that will be migrated to WCF unless you are willing to rewrite them or if you are confident that WCF provides a similar capability.