The SharePoint Web Services

The SharePoint Web Services

Windows SharePoint Services was being designed and developed during the time when Microsoft was beginning to heavily push Web services. It should be no surprise, then, to find out that you can get at the data in SharePoint through Web services. In fact, there's not just one Web service involved; there are 16. Here's a brief rundown of the Web services that a SharePoint server makes available out of the box:

• http://server:5966/_vti_adm/Admin.asmx - Administrative methods such as creating and deleting sites
• http://server/_vti_bin/Alerts.asmx - Methods for working with alerts
• http://server/_vti_bin/DspSts.asmx - Methods for retrieving schemas and data
• http://server/_vti_bin/DWS.asmx - Methods for working with Document Workspaces
• http://server/_vti_bin/Forms.asmx - Methods for working with user interface forms
• http://server/_vti_bin/Imaging.asmx - Methods for working with picture libraries
• http://server/_vti_bin/Lists.asmx - Methods for working with lists
• http://server/_vti_bin/Meetings.asmx - Methods for working with Meeting Workspaces
• http://server/_vti_bin/Permissions.asmx - Methods for working with SharePoint Services security
• http://server/_vti_bin/SiteData.asmx - Methods used by Windows SharePoint Portal Server
• http://server/_vti_bin/Sites.asmx - Contains a single method to retrieve site templates
• http://server/_vti_bin/UserGroup.asmx - Methods for working with users and groups
• http://server/_vti_bin/versions.asmx - Methods for working with file versions
• http://server/_vti_bin/Views.asmx - Methods for working with views of lists
• http://server/_vti_bin/WebPartPages.asmx - Methods for working with Web Parts
• http://server/_vti_bin/Webs.asmx - Methods for working with sites and subsites