Where to deploy a custom web service?

Question

Hi all,

I'm creating a custom web service for SharePoint that will be used by an external ASP.NET application to generate SharePoint sites when needed.

Is there any reason why I should deploy it into the SharePoint environment and call it through _vti_bin folder? 

It seems a lot easier to deploy as a separate web application running on the same server as SharePoint. I need to set some security settings (only allowing a specific account to access the service) as well as some keys in web.config that the service will use. I also don't need to run the service in the context of a particular site.

Any thoughts on this? 

Thanks,
Christoffer

Answer 1

Hi Christoffer,

There's no real benefit in deploying it to SharePoint other than preventing cross-domain issues if you call it from within SharePoint (for example in an InfoPath form or whetever). In your case, it'd be much easier to properly secure the service if it was running as a separate web application.

---

Ch. - My Blog