Web Services Enhancements (WSE) 3.0 for Microsoft .NET

About WSE 3.0

WSE 3.0 simplifies the development and deployment of secure Web services. It enables developers and administrators to apply security policies to Web services running on the .NET Framework 2.0. Using WSE 3.0, Web services communication can be signed and encrypted using Kerberos tickets, X.509 certificates and other custom binary and XML-based security tokens. In addition username/password credentials can be used for authentication purposes. An enhanced security model provides a policy-driven foundation for securing Web services. WSE also supports the ability to establish a trust-issuing service for retrieval and validation of security tokens, as well as the ability to establish more efficient long-running secure communication via secure conversations.

Simplified Security
WSE 3.0 has significantly simplified the securing of common SOAP message exchange patterns by providing built-in turnkey security profiles to easily secure SOAP messages between a client and a service. With WSE 3.0 the security policy format has been simplified to reflect these security scenarios. Like WSE 2.0, WSE 3.0 enables developers to use declarative files to specify behavior, including security requirements, when receiving and sending messages from a client or a service. These message level behaviors, defined through policy files, are called policy assertions. WSE 3.0 has aligned the declarative policy model with the imperative programming model; such that policies are always used to apply security and other assertions to a SOAP message either via files or in code. Policy files are associated with a client proxy or a service via a Policy attribute. E.g. in C# [Policy("ServerPolicy")]

Sending Large Amounts of Binary Data
In addition to providing easier security, WSE 3.0 provides the ability to send large amounts of binary data efficiently and securely via the W3C SOAP Message Transmission Optimization Mechanism (MTOM) specification. MTOM composes with WS-Security, reduces the size of messages on the wire helping in low bandwidth scenarios and in integrates seamlessly with existing Web services.

Additional Security Features
Additional security features include signature confirmation, opaque security tokens and the ability to explicitly create encrypted key tokens. Security session management has improved by enabling secure conversations that have been lost to automatically be re-established and the ability to explicitly cancel a current secure session. Secure conversations can now be used in web farm scenarios to improve the scalability whilst taking advantage of the performance optimizations gained through the use of secure conversation. Many of these security features are due to the support of the latest WS-Security, WS-SecureConversation and WS-Trust specifications.

Integrated with Visual Studio 2005
WSE 3.0 provides support for ASP.NET Web services to be hosted outside of IIS for example in Windows services, console applications or even COM+ applications and called with TCP protocol. WSE 3.0 has an extensible architecture that easily allows alternative protocols to be supported e.g. UDP or SMTP.

WSE 3.0 supports 64 bit Windows Platforms

Interoperable with Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)
WSE 3.0 is aligned with the same set of security specifications as WCF and hence is wire level compatible. This means that if you build and deploy secure Web services with WSE 3.0, WCF clients can communicate with them. Equally WSE 3.0 clients can communicate with WCF Services.

Standards Compliant
WSE provides a foundation for building applications based on Web services specifications published by Microsoft and industry partners including WS-Security 1.0 and 1.1, WS-Trust, WS-SecureConversation, WS-Addressing and Message Transmission Optimization Mechanism (MTOM).

Platform Support
WSE 3.0 is built for developers using Visual Studio 2005 and the .NET Framework 2.0 and has a full life-cycle policy support in line with .NET Framework 2.0 on the supported Operating Systems listed below. Please review the product documentation for more information about WSE 3.0.

WSE 3.0 and WSE 2.0 SP3 can be installed side by side on the same machine. WSE 2.0 SP3 is supported on both .NET Framework 1.1 and on .NET Framework 2.0.

Note: If you install any of the Visual Studio 2005 Express Editions, these do not have control add-in support. As a result the WSE configuration tool is not available from the Visual Studio Solution Explorer and you have to use the standalone version of the WSE configuration tool. The WSE configuration tool does install and integrate with all other SKUs of Visual Studio 2005.

Supported Operating Systems

Windows 2000 Professional Edition , Windows 2000 Server, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1, Windows Server 2003, Enterprise x64 Edition, Windows Server 2003, Standard x64 Edition, Windows XP, Windows XP 64-bit, Windows XP Home Edition , Windows XP Professional Edition , Windows XP Service Pack 1, Windows XP Service Pack 2

• PC with Pentium 400 MHz or faster processor; Pentium 800 MHz or faster recommended
• 96 MB of RAM (128 MB or higher recommended)
• Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) 5.x or 6.0 and
• One of the following is required:
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005
• Microsoft .NET Framework SDK version 2.0

Note: IIS is not required when using SOAP messages with the TCP protocol.
Note: WSE 3.0 is not supported if installed on a computer with a version of the .NET Framework earlier than 2.0 or a version of Visual Studio earlier than Visual Studio 2005.