Difference between .NET Web Service & Web Service Application (NOT Web-Application OR WCF Service App)

Question

Can anyone point me in the direction of resources that explain the difference between the two?

They appear to do the same thing but are implemented in a different way.. e.g. web service application compiles to dll and global.asax.vb compiles into the app, rather than being treated in the same way as a normal web service.

Edit: web-service-application is accessed by adding a project, then selecting web when adding to a solution the other is accessed by adding a "new website" then selecting asp.net web-service

Answer 1

The real difference is like the difference between an ASP.NET Web Application and an ASP.NET Web Site.

The Web Application is designed to be a coherent application, and should reside in it's own IIS Application (hence the reason it compiles to a DLL). The Web Site is designed to be a standalone web site, and so it is automatically compiled during the first request. Multiple Web Sites can be deployed to the same directory in IIS without issue. The other difference is a Web Application has a project file, a Web Site does not use a project file, so everything in the project (references, other code etc.) must be in a known location.

This question is similar to this one - that has a really great answer to this question.

Answer 2

Not very detailed, but found this, (last post):

WebService And Web Service Application , both are working in same concept. If you create separate webservice application , you need to reference it ,and it create a proxy object, you can work with webservice through that proxy object. if you create a webservice within website, you need not to reference it