Integrating XML Web Services with VB6 Applications

摘要

While VB .NET supports web-service integration natively with Visual Studio .NET, no such built-in support exists for VB6. Consequently, you must use the Microsoft SOAP Toolkit if VB6 clients are to consume web services. In this article, I present a method and a couple of scenarios that illustrate how legacy VB6 applications can consume web services written in C++. The complete UltraMaxService web service, which I present as an example along with a sample VB6 consumer application, is available electronically; see "Resource Center" (page 5). The easiest way to integrate XML web services with VB6 applications involves installation of Microsoft's freely available SOAP Toolkit 3.0(http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/downloads/ list/websrv.asp). Although the SOAP Toolkit was originally designed to provide XML web-service functionality for existing COM components (that is, to convert COM components into XML web services), it can also be used for consuming virtually any web service designed from scratch.