A while back, I posted about VS.NET not accepting non-standard ports for web services when adding them via “Add Web Reference…”. I would like to update that post and say that boy, am I a moron. Of COURSE it can accept non-standard ports (and I wondered how they could leave that simple “feature” out of VS.NET!)

I attended the VS 2005 launch event in my hometown today (Indianapolis), and at the “Meet the Experts” session afterwards, I presented a similar problem to the one I mentioned previously to the VS.NET 2005 expert. Well, long story short, Bill Steele found the solution to my problem (thank you!). It was that the disco generated by the web service on the server (a 3rd-party web service) was incorrect, it was redirecting the WS consumer to an invalid URL (hence VS.NET wasn’t able to auto-generate the reference to it). Well, about 10 minutes later, on my way home, it hit me like a smack in the face that the issue I previously had was with the same WS provider, and that I never did test my “issue” in my own controlled environment. Geez. I feel like a moron! I would bet extremely large sums of money that it was the same issue then that I am seeing now. (the old URL is now defunct, so I can’t test it against their server, and I don’t feel like taking the time to prove it since I’m so sure of what the problem was) I will keep my old blog post around just to remind me to always hunt down ALL avenues–I had left one unexplored last time (and this time) and it happened to be the one place the error existed.

So thanks to Bill! You really are the expert!!!