Image Catalogue Web Service with Dreamweaver

The posts are all over the newsgroups, Dreamweaver developers trying to use Web Services in their website and applications but to no avail. The most common error being posted is the “Unable to Generate Proxy” message when users try to implement a WSDL file from a Web Service.

It’s clear Dreamweaver developers are trying to use this feature but are having a hard time understanding exactly how to do so. There seems to be very limited help regarding the subject as well. In fact, a well known author has even stated that it’s “impossible” and to just use Visual Studio.NET.

The fact is using Web Services with Dreamweaver is not impossible at all; it simply requires a thorough understanding of the .NET framework and its commands. The average developer is not going to have this kind of expertise, especially regarding something as daunting and complex as the .NET framework.

In this tutorial we will accomplish two things: First we will implement a demonstration Web Service which returns a list of thumbnail images, and second, we will learn how to implement this Web Service correctly within Dreamweaver and create a demonstration page which will dynamically render the thumbnail images onto a Web Form in ASP.NET.

Because the Web Service itself is built using Visual Studio.NET you must have it installed in order to follow through the steps of building the Web Service. If you don’t have Visual Studio.NET you can still use the portion of this tutorial regarding the implementation of the Web Service, however you need to have the full .NET SDK installed, not just the .NET framework.