RSS vs Webservice

[programmerboy]

I don't see any difference b/w rss and webservices. Both are getting information from another website. If RSS is just an xml file then all we need to do is use it as a datasource for gridview and bind it. Am I missing something here?

[Curtis Rutland]

Yes, you are missing a lot. ;)

RSS is just a feed. It's plain XML with a specific schema that is made to be consumable by RSS readers. Of course, knowing this schema, you can certainly bind it to a GridView or any other bindable control. But RSS is useful for news stories, or blog posts, or any kind of feed.

A web service, on the other hand (depending on the type, I'll assume you meant SOAP), accepts a properly formatted XML request and returns a response. Basically, it's a way to expose certain actions and information over the web. .NET obfuscates most of that for you, so in the end, what you are left with is like a web library...you can make calls to multiple web methods, and get serialized responses. This is useful for all kinds of things. For example, I've been using web services to expose a database for my Silverlight applications.

The two really aren't the same thing at all.

[Frinavale]

Hmm, well the point of developing an RSS application is to be able to supply up-to-date Web logs (known as blogs) to other websites.

It's not really meant to be consumed in a single website or page...it's larger than that. It's meant to be sending feeds (an Atom/RSS document) to other websites about the content in your site (or whatever your reporting about). The other websites consume the feeds that your service generates....the other websites display the information contained in the feed to the end user in hopes that they'll be interested enough in it to link back to your site.

I don't think that RSS applications use Web Services either. They're more complicated than that... from what I understand, there's several components working together to make this possible.

You're going to have to implement a Service that manages the RSS feeds....it needs to be able to accept new feeds and send them out.

Check out Decentralized Software Services (DSS). I think it might get you started :)

-Frinny

[Curtis Rutland]

Some points of correction Frinny:
@Frinavale
RSS doesn't actually send anything. It just sits there, waiting to be consumed. I know you didn't mean it that way, but it is a common misconception that I've actually had to deal with here at the company recently.

And RSS is only as complicated as you want to make it. I made an RSS Feed for a site using a single ASPX page. I read the info from a DB, built the XML, then Response.Write() it and then Response.End();

OP, as you can see from that example that it doesn't have to be a static XML file, but it can be generated on the fly.

You could certainly bind an RSS feed to a GridView, assuming you provide an XmlDataSource and the proper XPath queries.

[Frinavale]

@insertAlias
Thanks for the clarification iA. That is what I meant when I referred to RSS...

I've never actually developed an application like this. The topic was explained to me once in a....(oh beware: inner geeky-ness coming out)....a .NET user group meeting but since I have no need for it in my day-to-day development I've forgotten most of what was covered.

I just came across a pretty good article about Syndication that explains exactly what RSS is all about :)

[edit]
I just realised that I'm not even sure what the OP is developing.
Are you developing something that consumes RSS feeds?
[/edit]

[Curtis Rutland]

I believe I used that exact article when I was researching my project. 4guysfromrolla.com usually has good stuff.

[programmerboy]

Thanks Frinny and IA for your replies. Now I am clear about RSS. It is simply an xml document that is sitting on the server to be consumed by anyone. I wanted to use RSS feeds to display headlines and IT news in my website. Does anyone of you have links for headlines and microsoft IT news RSS feeds?

[Curtis Rutland]

Most blogs and sites will provide their RSS feeds. Just check your favorite sites.