How to implement a sharepoint lists webservice

Question

I want to implement a web-service that uses the same interface as the Lists web service in sharepoint. I do not want to run this through sharepoint. What is a good way to get started in this?

I have tried to use the wsdl.exe tool to generate some wrapper classes but the generated wrappers seem to have punted on the structure parameters and just specified them as XML. For example below is the generated wrapper for GetList - it should return a structure which has the information in the list, but instead it is returning XML. What is going on?

...

/// <remarks/>
[System.CodeDom.Compiler.GeneratedCodeAttribute("wsdl", "2.0.50727.1432")]
[System.Web.Services.WebServiceBindingAttribute(Name="ListsSoap", Namespace="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/")]
public interface IListsSoap
{    
    /// <remarks/>
    [System.Web.Services.WebMethodAttribute()]
    [System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapDocumentMethodAttribute("http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/GetList", RequestNamespace="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/", ResponseNamespace="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/", Use=System.Web.Services.Description.SoapBindingUse.Literal, ParameterStyle=System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapParameterStyle.Wrapped)]
    System.Xml.XmlNode GetList(string listName);   
}

Answer 1

This might be a nieve answer because I'm not that well versed on creating my own webservices but arn't they always ment to return xml? Or rather SOAP