Deploying and Running a .NET Web Service Project

After you create a .NET Web Service project, you can deploy it from the Project painter or from a context menu on the project object in the System Tree.

When you deploy directly to an IIS server, PowerBuilder creates an application directory under the IIS virtual root and creates an ASMX file in the application directory. The ASMX file created by the project is an ASP.NET executable file rather than a true WSDL file, so you might need to add the “?WSDL” suffix to the URL when you try to access this Web service from certain types of applications.

In addition to the application directory and the ASMX file, deploying the project creates a directory structure that is substantially the same as that created by a .NET Web Forms project. In fact, PowerBuilder deploys a Web Service target as a Web Forms target, but it creates an additional assembly containing the Web service wrapper class. The file name for this assembly is generated by appending the characters “_ws” to the file name of the main application assembly. It is generated with the main assembly in the application’s bin directory.

For more information, see Directory Structure on the Server.

Note: In some versions of IIS for the Windows XP platform, ASPNET Web services use the Temp system directory during method processing. If the ASPNET user (IIS 5), the IIS_WPG user group (IIS 6), or the IIS_IUSRS user group (IIS 7 and 7.5) does not have read or write access to the Temp directory on the server, applications invoking methods on those services receive an error message stating that temporary classes cannot be generated.

You can prevent this error by granting appropriate user or user group permissions to the Temp directory in the same way you grant permissions for the Sybase and database directories. See Setting Up a SQL Anywhere Database Connection.

When you deploy to a setup file in a .NET Web Service project, the project builds an MSI file that includes the ASMX file, PowerBuilder system libraries for .NET, and any resource files you listed in the project wizard or painter.

Note: You can use the Runtime Packager to copy required PowerBuilder runtime files to deployment servers. After you install the package created by the runtime packager, you must restart the server. For information on required runtime files, see Checklist for Deployment. For information about the Runtime Packager, see Application Techniques > Deploying Applications and Components.

You can run or debug a .NET Web Service project from the PowerBuilder UI if you fill in the Application field (and optionally, the Argument and Start In fields) on the project Run tab in the Project painter. The Application field is typically filled in automatically with the name of the Internet Explorer executable on the development computer.