Web Services Enhancements
Web Services Enhancements (WSE) is an obsolete add-on to the Microsoft .NET Framework, which includes a set of classes that implement additional WS-* web service specifications chiefly in areas such as security, reliable messaging, and sending attachments. Web services are business logic components which provide functionality via the Internet using standard protocols such as HTTP. Web services communicate via either SOAP or REST messages. WSE provides extensions to the SOAP protocol and allows the definition of custom security, reliable messaging, policy, etc. Developers can add these capabilities at design time using code or at deployment time through the use of a policy file.
WSE has been replaced by Windows Communication Foundation (WCF).
Versions
All versions install side-by-side.
WSE 1.0 for .NET Framework 1.0 was released in December 2002. It was based on the draft version of WS-Security. It is not supported anymore and is not compatible with .NET 2.0. It uses the older "XMLSOAP" namespace in contrast to the OASIS namespace used by WSS4J and WSE 2.0/3.0.