Web services have become a basic part of the architecture of any modern software application, not only regarding Line of Business (LOB) applications but all types. With the generalization of the Internet and devices connected 24/7, applications need a continuous way to communicate with client and server sides. Even though in the entire book we have been working with web services in the form of WCF RIA Services, this is a very specialized way of remotely accessing databases through an automatic layer of services. Even though these services can be customized in several ways, they can't reach the level of flexibility that web services can offer us, as we will see in this chapter.
Therefore, web services get into the picture for solving two different kinds of problems:
We need to establish communication between client and server but WCF RIA Services doesn't fit into our implementation scenarios. Maybe we could make use of a custom service for a bundle of data...