SOAP built in to VB 7 (Visual Basic 7.0's New Features):
"A Web service is a component that runs on a Web server and allows client programs to call its methods over HTTP. Each method on the component appears as a URL and may return data (perhaps an XML document) and accept parameters. This technology is based on the open SOAP specification, so now our server-side components can be available to virtually any client, regardless of language or platform." Whether you care about VB or not, this is interesting if you care about SOAP and web apps/services, because the VB developer base is among the largest in the world. If they can suddenly easily set up SOAP-based web services, things could get interesting. Unfortunately, it's not going to be too suddenly, since VB7 isn't expected to be out for another year.
"A Web service is a component that runs on a Web server and allows client programs to call its methods over HTTP. Each method on the component appears as a URL and may return data (perhaps an XML document) and accept parameters. This technology is based on the open SOAP specification, so now our server-side components can be available to virtually any client, regardless of language or platform." Whether you care about VB or not, this is interesting if you care about SOAP and web apps/services, because the VB developer base is among the largest in the world. If they can suddenly easily set up SOAP-based web services, things could get interesting. Unfortunately, it's not going to be too suddenly, since VB7 isn't expected to be out for another year.