Is it possible to create asynchronous web services in ASP.NET

Question

I am not looking to be able to call web services asyncronously, I can already do that. What I want is to be able to create an asynchronous web service in a similar manner that I can create an asynchronous web page using the AddOnPreRenderCompleteAsync method.

I have a web service that is dependent on another web service. I wish to be able to rewrite my web service is such a way that it releases the worker/IO threads to process other requests whilst the call to the external web service completes and then attaches to another worker/IO thread to complete the processing much like the asynchronous page example at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163725.aspx

I cannot however find any references to this being available for web services (or more specifically, nothing similar is available for web services) within ASP.NET

I am using ASP.NET 2.0/3.5

Answer 1

Did you search on MSDN?

• How to: Create Asynchronous Web Service Methods
• How to: Chain Asynchronous Calls with a Web Service Method
• MSDN Search: "asynchronous web services"

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Note

Notice the part where they say:

This topic is specific to a legacy technology. XML Web services and XML Web service clients should now be created using [Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)].