What are the differences between a web service and a Windows service?
web-services, windows-services
Solution
They're about as different as two things can be.
A Windows service is an application that runs without a user being logged into the system, usually to process some data on the machine that needs no user intervention to work with.
A Web service is a website that, when contacted, returns XML (typically) in one of several standard formats for the service consumer to process.
One can't be substituted for the other. They are fundamentally different.
Problem
What are the differences between a web service and a Windows service? My experience has mostly been with Windows services, and I have never created a web service. Do web services behave similarly to Windows services? Can they have scheduling, run at certain times, etc.? When you would use a web service in place of a Windows service, and vice versa?