Web Services (asmx) Standards and Microsoft

Question

When I used to create xml web services before, Visual Studio created a SOAP interface where any HTTP/XML based client could consume it. From what I heard from a colleague, Microsoft moved away from this standard and created their own standard. At this point, I am leaning toward writing an asmx web service application (because of the ramp up time to learn WCF) and was wondering if other platform applications (java or other based) will be able to consume them.

Any light you could shed on this for me would be appreciated.

EDIT: For clarification, I am using ASMX web services, and not WCF.

Answer 1

Depending on you WCF endpoint binding (wsHttpContextBinding, for instance), you can keep that SOAP format to exchange messages with .NET services. No "new standards" were created this time. =)

You can check this article for more information about WCF Interoperability