Web Services Enhancements 2.0 Toolkit

The Web Services Enhancements (WSE) 2.0 toolkit gives advanced developers early access to important Web services protocols. In particular, the toolkit enables developers to become familiar with and implement Web services message security before the release of “Indigo,” Microsoft’s upcoming technology for Web services development. While the toolkit is now fully supported for production use, developers should be aware of possible compatibility issues before charging ahead.

Toolkit Supports Latest Web Services Standards

Key Web services protocols supported in WSE 2.0 include the following:

WS-Security provides message encryption and defines how security tokens (such as X.509 certificates and Kerberos tickets) should be encoded and attached to Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) messages. This enables messages to remain secure even when stored in databases or queues, or when sent between sites that don’t have a secure, end-to-end network connection. WS-Security was recently ratified by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), a vendor consortium for XML standards.