Can a .NET Web Service be accessed from a VB6 Client?

[John Kotuby]

I am expecting the answer to be, "of course not" or " are you kidding?", but
maybe (hopefully) I am wrong and somebody can point me to an ingenious
example of how the impossible just takes a little more work.

TIA

[adm]

It's possible.

Download this:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en

and see this, which shows how to do it with Visual Basic for
Applications:
http://metrix.fcny.org:9999/confluence/x/Jw0

John Kotuby wrote:

I am expecting the answer to be, "of course not" or " are you kidding?", but
maybe (hopefully) I am wrong and somebody can point me to an ingenious
example of how the impossible just takes a little more work.

TIA

[adm]

Here's another quick tutorial that deals with VB6 more directly:
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/mic...developers-1/6

John Kotuby wrote:

I am expecting the answer to be, "of course not" or " are you kidding?", but
maybe (hopefully) I am wrong and somebody can point me to an ingenious
example of how the impossible just takes a little more work.

TIA

[Cor Ligthert [MVP]]

John,

Just to clarify adm answer for others who are looking to your question: I
wanted to write, "have a look at SOAP on MSDN", but adm is providing you the
link to that.

Cor

"John Kotuby" <jo***@powerlist.comschreef in bericht
news:eU*************@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...

>I am expecting the answer to be, "of course not" or " are you kidding?",
but maybe (hopefully) I am wrong and somebody can point me to an ingenious
example of how the impossible just takes a little more work.

TIA

[Michel Posseth [MCP]]

Hi John

yes you can with the "ugly"soap toolkit ,,, i had lots of problems with it
to deploy it to my end users so in the end
i used the post and get methods of the webservice instead of soap

wich in the end turned out to be a much cleaner solution

also remebre that you can only use so called "simple" data types

regards

Michel Posseth [MCP]
"John Kotuby" <jo***@powerlist.comschreef in bericht
news:eU*************@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...

>I am expecting the answer to be, "of course not" or " are you kidding?",
but maybe (hopefully) I am wrong and somebody can point me to an ingenious
example of how the impossible just takes a little more work.

TIA

[John Kotuby]

Thanks Michael,
I appreciate the warning about the soap toolkit approach. I will look into
the HTTP Get and Post methods for eliciting a Web Service response.

"Michel Posseth [MCP]" <MS**@posseth.comwrote in message
news:ui**************@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...

>
Hi John

yes you can with the "ugly"soap toolkit ,,, i had lots of problems with it
to deploy it to my end users so in the end
i used the post and get methods of the webservice instead of soap

wich in the end turned out to be a much cleaner solution

also remebre that you can only use so called "simple" data types

regards

Michel Posseth [MCP]
"John Kotuby" <jo***@powerlist.comschreef in bericht
news:eU*************@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...

>>I am expecting the answer to be, "of course not" or " are you kidding?",
but maybe (hopefully) I am wrong and somebody can point me to an ingenious
example of how the impossible just takes a little more work.

TIA

[John Kotuby]

Thanks for the lead..
Sometimes knowing where to look is half the battle.

"adm" <ad*****@yahoo.comwrote in message
news:11**********************@i42g2000cwa.googlegr oups.com...

Here's another quick tutorial that deals with VB6 more directly:
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/mic...developers-1/6

John Kotuby wrote:

>I am expecting the answer to be, "of course not" or " are you kidding?",
but
maybe (hopefully) I am wrong and somebody can point me to an ingenious
example of how the impossible just takes a little more work.

TIA

[adm]

Michel Posseth [MCP] wrote:

Hi John

yes you can with the "ugly"soap toolkit ,,, i had lots of problems with it
to deploy it to my end users so in the end

i could be entirely wrong about this, but I think you MIGHT be able to
build a client app without deploying the SOAP toolkit to your end
users. I used the Office 2003 SOAP Toolkit to create a proxy class in
an Access ADP, then ran that ADP on a computer with a fresh install of
Windows XP SP2 and MSXML 6 (i think), and it was able to access the Web
Service just fine, without the toolkit being installed (as far as I
know). Not sure if this will similarly work in VB6, but it might, and
it's definitely worth testing.

also remember that you can only use so called "simple" data types

True, but you can serialize a complex data type to a "simple" data type
of an XML string, and then return that string, and do various things
with it on the client side. Using this method, I've reconstructed ADO
recordsets on the client side from XML strings, which although a bit
slow, is something you can try when it's your only option for getting
what would otherwise be complex data types back to a "legacy" client.

-adm

>
"John Kotuby" <jo***@powerlist.comschreef in bericht
news:eU*************@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...

I am expecting the answer to be, "of course not" or " are you kidding?",
but maybe (hopefully) I am wrong and somebody can point me to an ingenious
example of how the impossible just takes a little more work.

TIA

[John Kotuby]

Thanks adm,

I used this code from a web example that you pointed me to:
------------------------------------------------------------
Private Sub Form_Load()

Dim objWebSvcClient As New MSSOAPLib30.SoapClient30
Dim dTemp As Double

objWebSvcClient.MSSoapInit _
"http://localhost/TempConvert1/TempConvert1.asmx?wsdl"

dTemp = objWebSvcClient.ConvertTemperature(212)
MsgBox dTemp
Unload Me

End Sub
-----------------------------------------------------------

It refers to a small Web Service that I wrote and it runs fine from my Dev
machine (as expected).
However, trying to run it on an XP machine after installing MSXML 6 and got
the runtime 429 message "Can't create object". I'm not sure how to create
the proxy class in VB6 (unless that is what reference to the WSDL actually
did).

I created an MSI with the required merge modules and editied it with Orca.
However, when I tried to install it on another XP machine, I was propmpted
to shut down MS Outlook 2003 so that files could be updated. At that point I
bailed from the install fearing a corruption of Outlook.

When editing with Orca I noticed that all 3 custom actions for the
winhttp.dll were included in the InstallExecuteSequence table. I made sure
that the sequence numbers were between 1500 and 1525.

"adm" <ad*****@yahoo.comwrote in message
news:11**********************@m79g2000cwm.googlegr oups.com...

Michel Posseth [MCP] wrote:

>Hi John

yes you can with the "ugly"soap toolkit ,,, i had lots of problems with
it
to deploy it to my end users so in the end

i could be entirely wrong about this, but I think you MIGHT be able to
build a client app without deploying the SOAP toolkit to your end
users. I used the Office 2003 SOAP Toolkit to create a proxy class in
an Access ADP, then ran that ADP on a computer with a fresh install of
Windows XP SP2 and MSXML 6 (i think), and it was able to access the Web
Service just fine, without the toolkit being installed (as far as I
know). Not sure if this will similarly work in VB6, but it might, and
it's definitely worth testing.

>also remember that you can only use so called "simple" data types

True, but you can serialize a complex data type to a "simple" data type
of an XML string, and then return that string, and do various things
with it on the client side. Using this method, I've reconstructed ADO
recordsets on the client side from XML strings, which although a bit
slow, is something you can try when it's your only option for getting
what would otherwise be complex data types back to a "legacy" client.

-adm

>>
"John Kotuby" <jo***@powerlist.comschreef in bericht
news:eU*************@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...

>I am expecting the answer to be, "of course not" or " are you kidding?",
but maybe (hopefully) I am wrong and somebody can point me to an
ingenious
example of how the impossible just takes a little more work.

TIA

[adm]

John Kotuby wrote:

It refers to a small Web Service that I wrote and it runs fine from my Dev
machine (as expected).
However, trying to run it on an XP machine after installing MSXML 6 and got
the runtime 429 message "Can't create object". I'm not sure how to create
the proxy class in VB6 (unless that is what reference to the WSDL actually
did).

The proxy class gets created when you add a web reference to the
project (in Office 2003). If you can copy that class into your VB6
project and compile it, I wonder if it would work without the SOAP
toolkit installed on the client machine. Not trying to push the
issue...just wondering if you can get it to work. Good luck!

>
I created an MSI with the required merge modules and editied it with Orca.
However, when I tried to install it on another XP machine, I was propmpted
to shut down MS Outlook 2003 so that files could be updated. At that point I
bailed from the install fearing a corruption of Outlook.

When editing with Orca I noticed that all 3 custom actions for the
winhttp.dll were included in the InstallExecuteSequence table. I made sure
that the sequence numbers were between 1500 and 1525.

"adm" <ad*****@yahoo.comwrote in message
news:11**********************@m79g2000cwm.googlegr oups.com...

Michel Posseth [MCP] wrote:

Hi John

yes you can with the "ugly"soap toolkit ,,, i had lots of problems with
it
to deploy it to my end users so in the end

i could be entirely wrong about this, but I think you MIGHT be able to
build a client app without deploying the SOAP toolkit to your end
users. I used the Office 2003 SOAP Toolkit to create a proxy class in
an Access ADP, then ran that ADP on a computer with a fresh install of
Windows XP SP2 and MSXML 6 (i think), and it was able to access the Web
Service just fine, without the toolkit being installed (as far as I
know). Not sure if this will similarly work in VB6, but it might, and
it's definitely worth testing.

also remember that you can only use so called "simple" data types

True, but you can serialize a complex data type to a "simple" data type
of an XML string, and then return that string, and do various things
with it on the client side. Using this method, I've reconstructed ADO
recordsets on the client side from XML strings, which although a bit
slow, is something you can try when it's your only option for getting
what would otherwise be complex data types back to a "legacy" client.

-adm

>
"John Kotuby" <jo***@powerlist.comschreef in bericht
news:eU*************@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
I am expecting the answer to be, "of course not" or " are you kidding?",
but maybe (hopefully) I am wrong and somebody can point me to an
ingenious
example of how the impossible just takes a little more work.

TIA

[adm]

..just wondering if you can get it to work.

Here's a funny thread from a few years ago that discusses the matter:
http://tinyurl.com/gqplb

He was trying to create the proxy class in VB6, but it looks like he
never got anywhere.

It's strange to me that the Office Web Services Toolkit could create a
proxy class but the SOAP Toolkit won't. Can anyone confirm this is
true?

adm

adm wrote:

John Kotuby wrote:

It refers to a small Web Service that I wrote and it runs fine from my Dev
machine (as expected).
However, trying to run it on an XP machine after installing MSXML 6 and got
the runtime 429 message "Can't create object". I'm not sure how to create
the proxy class in VB6 (unless that is what reference to the WSDL actually
did).

The proxy class gets created when you add a web reference to the
project (in Office 2003). If you can copy that class into your VB6
project and compile it, I wonder if it would work without the SOAP
toolkit installed on the client machine. Not trying to push the
issue...just wondering if you can get it to work. Good luck!

I created an MSI with the required merge modules and editied it with Orca.
However, when I tried to install it on another XP machine, I was propmpted
to shut down MS Outlook 2003 so that files could be updated. At that point I
bailed from the install fearing a corruption of Outlook.

When editing with Orca I noticed that all 3 custom actions for the
winhttp.dll were included in the InstallExecuteSequence table. I made sure
that the sequence numbers were between 1500 and 1525.

"adm" <ad*****@yahoo.comwrote in message
news:11**********************@m79g2000cwm.googlegr oups.com...

Michel Posseth [MCP] wrote:
>Hi John
>>
>yes you can with the "ugly"soap toolkit ,,, i had lots of problems with
>it
>to deploy it to my end users so in the end
>
i could be entirely wrong about this, but I think you MIGHT be able to
build a client app without deploying the SOAP toolkit to your end
users. I used the Office 2003 SOAP Toolkit to create a proxy class in
an Access ADP, then ran that ADP on a computer with a fresh install of
Windows XP SP2 and MSXML 6 (i think), and it was able to access the Web
Service just fine, without the toolkit being installed (as far as I
know). Not sure if this will similarly work in VB6, but it might, and
it's definitely worth testing.
>
>also remember that you can only use so called "simple" data types
>
True, but you can serialize a complex data type to a "simple" data type
of an XML string, and then return that string, and do various things
with it on the client side. Using this method, I've reconstructed ADO
recordsets on the client side from XML strings, which although a bit
slow, is something you can try when it's your only option for getting
what would otherwise be complex data types back to a "legacy" client.
>
-adm
>
>>
>"John Kotuby" <jo***@powerlist.comschreef in bericht
>news:eU*************@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
>I am expecting the answer to be, "of course not" or " are you kidding?",
>but maybe (hopefully) I am wrong and somebody can point me to an
>ingenious
>example of how the impossible just takes a little more work.
>
TIA
>
>

[Michel Posseth [MCP]]

AFAIK you can,,,, however then your users need to have office installed

This was exactly my problem ,,,, to get it to work i needed dependencies
deployed with my app that were not a reall option
the soap toolkit turned out to be a buggy dependency to deploy ( with
testing on multiple systems we run in a lot of unpredictable errors ,
however when it worked it worked great , having a few thousand users of our
product we just couldn`t take the risk )

In the end i just used the VB6 internet transfer control ,,,,,( Msinet.OCX )
and parsed the return data myself wich worked fine

regards '

Michel Posseth [MCP]
"adm" <ad*****@yahoo.comschreef in bericht
news:11**********************@m79g2000cwm.googlegr oups.com...

>
John Kotuby wrote:

>It refers to a small Web Service that I wrote and it runs fine from my
Dev
machine (as expected).
However, trying to run it on an XP machine after installing MSXML 6 and
got
the runtime 429 message "Can't create object". I'm not sure how to create
the proxy class in VB6 (unless that is what reference to the WSDL
actually
did).

The proxy class gets created when you add a web reference to the
project (in Office 2003). If you can copy that class into your VB6
project and compile it, I wonder if it would work without the SOAP
toolkit installed on the client machine. Not trying to push the
issue...just wondering if you can get it to work. Good luck!

>>
I created an MSI with the required merge modules and editied it with
Orca.
However, when I tried to install it on another XP machine, I was
propmpted
to shut down MS Outlook 2003 so that files could be updated. At that
point I
bailed from the install fearing a corruption of Outlook.

When editing with Orca I noticed that all 3 custom actions for the
winhttp.dll were included in the InstallExecuteSequence table. I made
sure
that the sequence numbers were between 1500 and 1525.

"adm" <ad*****@yahoo.comwrote in message
news:11**********************@m79g2000cwm.googleg roups.com...

Michel Posseth [MCP] wrote:
Hi John

yes you can with the "ugly"soap toolkit ,,, i had lots of problems
with
it
to deploy it to my end users so in the end

i could be entirely wrong about this, but I think you MIGHT be able to
build a client app without deploying the SOAP toolkit to your end
users. I used the Office 2003 SOAP Toolkit to create a proxy class in
an Access ADP, then ran that ADP on a computer with a fresh install of
Windows XP SP2 and MSXML 6 (i think), and it was able to access the Web
Service just fine, without the toolkit being installed (as far as I
know). Not sure if this will similarly work in VB6, but it might, and
it's definitely worth testing.

also remember that you can only use so called "simple" data types

True, but you can serialize a complex data type to a "simple" data type
of an XML string, and then return that string, and do various things
with it on the client side. Using this method, I've reconstructed ADO
recordsets on the client side from XML strings, which although a bit
slow, is something you can try when it's your only option for getting
what would otherwise be complex data types back to a "legacy" client.

-adm
"John Kotuby" <jo***@powerlist.comschreef in bericht
news:eU*************@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
I am expecting the answer to be, "of course not" or " are you
kidding?",
but maybe (hopefully) I am wrong and somebody can point me to an
ingenious
example of how the impossible just takes a little more work.

TIA

[Cor Ligthert [MVP]]

Michel,

With what SOAP toolkit did you do that, I once was busy (I thought) with 1.0
and after that never used it again.

Therefore is your expirience with 3.0 including updates as was showed by
adm.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en

Cor

"Michel Posseth [MCP]" <MS**@posseth.comschreef in bericht
news:e$**************@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...

>
AFAIK you can,,,, however then your users need to have office installed

This was exactly my problem ,,,, to get it to work i needed dependencies
deployed with my app that were not a reall option
the soap toolkit turned out to be a buggy dependency to deploy ( with
testing on multiple systems we run in a lot of unpredictable errors ,
however when it worked it worked great , having a few thousand users of
our product we just couldn`t take the risk )

In the end i just used the VB6 internet transfer control ,,,,,(
Msinet.OCX ) and parsed the return data myself wich worked fine

regards '

Michel Posseth [MCP]
"adm" <ad*****@yahoo.comschreef in bericht
news:11**********************@m79g2000cwm.googlegr oups.com...

>>
John Kotuby wrote:

>>It refers to a small Web Service that I wrote and it runs fine from my
Dev
machine (as expected).
However, trying to run it on an XP machine after installing MSXML 6 and
got
the runtime 429 message "Can't create object". I'm not sure how to
create
the proxy class in VB6 (unless that is what reference to the WSDL
actually
did).

The proxy class gets created when you add a web reference to the
project (in Office 2003). If you can copy that class into your VB6
project and compile it, I wonder if it would work without the SOAP
toolkit installed on the client machine. Not trying to push the
issue...just wondering if you can get it to work. Good luck!

>>>
I created an MSI with the required merge modules and editied it with
Orca.
However, when I tried to install it on another XP machine, I was
propmpted
to shut down MS Outlook 2003 so that files could be updated. At that
point I
bailed from the install fearing a corruption of Outlook.

When editing with Orca I noticed that all 3 custom actions for the
winhttp.dll were included in the InstallExecuteSequence table. I made
sure
that the sequence numbers were between 1500 and 1525.

"adm" <ad*****@yahoo.comwrote in message
news:11**********************@m79g2000cwm.google groups.com...
Michel Posseth [MCP] wrote:
Hi John

yes you can with the "ugly"soap toolkit ,,, i had lots of problems
with
it
to deploy it to my end users so in the end

i could be entirely wrong about this, but I think you MIGHT be able to
build a client app without deploying the SOAP toolkit to your end
users. I used the Office 2003 SOAP Toolkit to create a proxy class in
an Access ADP, then ran that ADP on a computer with a fresh install of
Windows XP SP2 and MSXML 6 (i think), and it was able to access the
Web
Service just fine, without the toolkit being installed (as far as I
know). Not sure if this will similarly work in VB6, but it might, and
it's definitely worth testing.

also remember that you can only use so called "simple" data types

True, but you can serialize a complex data type to a "simple" data
type
of an XML string, and then return that string, and do various things
with it on the client side. Using this method, I've reconstructed ADO
recordsets on the client side from XML strings, which although a bit
slow, is something you can try when it's your only option for getting
what would otherwise be complex data types back to a "legacy" client.

-adm
"John Kotuby" <jo***@powerlist.comschreef in bericht
news:eU*************@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
I am expecting the answer to be, "of course not" or " are you
kidding?",
but maybe (hopefully) I am wrong and somebody can point me to an
ingenious
example of how the impossible just takes a little more work.

TIA

[Michel Posseth [MCP]]

Hi Cor ,
The project i talked about was last revisioned somewhere in the midle of
2004 for my previous employer
http://abs-bv.netserver2.net/page.asp?lIntMenuId=192&lStrEntityId=<EN>brakedisc docu
i see that the current deploy package of the soap redistributable is from
8/13/2003 so it must have been the same version as i always try to use the
lastest technology availlable
regards

Michel Posseth [MCP]

"Cor Ligthert [MVP]" <no************@planet.nlschreef in bericht
news:uf**************@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...

Michel,

With what SOAP toolkit did you do that, I once was busy (I thought) with
1.0 and after that never used it again.

Therefore is your expirience with 3.0 including updates as was showed by
adm.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en

Cor

"Michel Posseth [MCP]" <MS**@posseth.comschreef in bericht
news:e$**************@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...

>>
AFAIK you can,,,, however then your users need to have office installed

This was exactly my problem ,,,, to get it to work i needed dependencies
deployed with my app that were not a reall option
the soap toolkit turned out to be a buggy dependency to deploy ( with
testing on multiple systems we run in a lot of unpredictable errors ,
however when it worked it worked great , having a few thousand users of
our product we just couldn`t take the risk )

In the end i just used the VB6 internet transfer control ,,,,,(
Msinet.OCX ) and parsed the return data myself wich worked fine

regards '

Michel Posseth [MCP]
"adm" <ad*****@yahoo.comschreef in bericht
news:11**********************@m79g2000cwm.googleg roups.com...

>>>
John Kotuby wrote:

It refers to a small Web Service that I wrote and it runs fine from my
Dev
machine (as expected).
However, trying to run it on an XP machine after installing MSXML 6 and
got
the runtime 429 message "Can't create object". I'm not sure how to
create
the proxy class in VB6 (unless that is what reference to the WSDL
actually
did).

The proxy class gets created when you add a web reference to the
project (in Office 2003). If you can copy that class into your VB6
project and compile it, I wonder if it would work without the SOAP
toolkit installed on the client machine. Not trying to push the
issue...just wondering if you can get it to work. Good luck!


I created an MSI with the required merge modules and editied it with
Orca.
However, when I tried to install it on another XP machine, I was
propmpted
to shut down MS Outlook 2003 so that files could be updated. At that
point I
bailed from the install fearing a corruption of Outlook.

When editing with Orca I noticed that all 3 custom actions for the
winhttp.dll were included in the InstallExecuteSequence table. I made
sure
that the sequence numbers were between 1500 and 1525.

"adm" <ad*****@yahoo.comwrote in message
news:11**********************@m79g2000cwm.googl egroups.com...
Michel Posseth [MCP] wrote:
Hi John

yes you can with the "ugly"soap toolkit ,,, i had lots of problems
with
it
to deploy it to my end users so in the end

i could be entirely wrong about this, but I think you MIGHT be able
to
build a client app without deploying the SOAP toolkit to your end
users. I used the Office 2003 SOAP Toolkit to create a proxy class in
an Access ADP, then ran that ADP on a computer with a fresh install
of
Windows XP SP2 and MSXML 6 (i think), and it was able to access the
Web
Service just fine, without the toolkit being installed (as far as I
know). Not sure if this will similarly work in VB6, but it might, and
it's definitely worth testing.

also remember that you can only use so called "simple" data types

True, but you can serialize a complex data type to a "simple" data
type
of an XML string, and then return that string, and do various things
with it on the client side. Using this method, I've reconstructed ADO
recordsets on the client side from XML strings, which although a bit
slow, is something you can try when it's your only option for getting
what would otherwise be complex data types back to a "legacy" client.

-adm
"John Kotuby" <jo***@powerlist.comschreef in bericht
news:eU*************@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
I am expecting the answer to be, "of course not" or " are you
kidding?",
but maybe (hopefully) I am wrong and somebody can point me to an
ingenious
example of how the impossible just takes a little more work.

TIA