Web Services is a small, but critical piece of the picture defined by .NET and Visual Studio.NET. Web Services provide developers with the ability to create scaleable and extensible distributed applications that can easily integrate with applications on other platforms. VB.NET is an attractive environment for Web Services architecture because it provides rapid development and is easy to maintain. This text is for intermediate to advanced level developers with experience in VB and/or ASP, and provides detailed case studies that explore how using Web Services can help solve real-world B2B and B2C problems, looks at development concerns such as security and availability, and explains how to create and consume Web Services in earlier versions of VB.