SOAP and WSDL in webservice

Question

I am a beginner to webservice concepts. Now I know how to deploy webservice in IIS. I checked the webservice URL

There I can see SOAP protocol contents and WSDL (after url type ?WSDL).

My questions are:

1. Can I run the webservice by replacing localhost with my IP address any where outside systems

2. Do I need to study SOAP and WSDL seperately at any time though both are generated by visual studio itself

Answer 1

1: broadly yes, but it depends on your IIS configuration and network topology. Typically, most of the internet won't be able to address your IIS unless you have configured the firewall etc. And DNS would be more typical for public servers. In complex scenarios you may have host-headers, multiple NICs/IPs, or other complications meaning that the IP (by itself) does little.

2: Entirely up to you; it depends largely on the project. If you are only serving your own projects, you can probably ignore the WSDL and rely on VS to do the right thing. If interop/portability is a major concern (to other frameworks/languages), then perhaps write the WSDL first.