Your essential guide for developing powerful customized Windows services

Get the practical reference to developing Windows services with Visual Basic 2008. Addressing the leading trend of software as a service this guide illustrates how developers with intermediate Visual Basic skills can design and implement Web services. It addresses a critical gap in the developer literature today showing that services can be developed with Visual Basic 2008 and are not restricted to XML-based applications or Microsoft Visual C#®. Software as a service is changing the dynamic between rich and thin clients. As device types multiply users expect "always-on" connectivity to link them to the robust Web and corporate applications they use on the desktop. Services which offload data storage and processing tasks to a server run efficiently on Web platforms on any device. Services do not need to be a complex coding task and this is the ideal resource for creating modern service-oriented applications. It covers integration of services with other Microsoft technologies including Microsoft BizTalk® Server Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) and Microsoft SQL Server™. Plus you'll get extensive code snippets and sample applications.