46.4. Working with the WebService Component

Another option for calling remote services is using SOAP-based Web Services. Web Services are commonly used in an enterprise environment, as they provide a lot of functionality beyond that which basic HTTP services support. Web Services are commonly delivered by Java EE and .NET services, so chances are if you're on a project in the financial world, you'll probably be connecting your Flex application to an existing Web Service. However, our sample in this section is going to use an Amazon-based Web Service to search their online catalog for books. This will allow us to work with Flex without worrying about the server implementation, which we'll get to in future chapters.

Using the WebService component in Flex follows a similar workflow to that of HTTPService, with a few changes and additions: