The System.Web.Services.WebServiceAttribute is not required for an XML Web service to be published and executed. You can use the WebServiceAttribute to specify a name for the XML Web service that is not restricted by the rules for a common language runtime identifier, which is used in the service description and the Service help page for the XML Web service.

An XML Web service should change its default XML namespace before it is made public. Each XML Web service needs a unique XML namespace to identify it so that client applications can distinguish it from other services on the Web. http://tempuri.org/ is available for XML Web services that are under development, but published XML Web services should use a more permanent namespace.

Your XML Web service should be identified by a XML namespace that you control. For example, you could use your company's Internet domain name as part of the XML namespace. Although many XML Web service XML namespaces look like URLs, they need not point to an actual resource on the Web. (XML Web service XML namespaces are URIs.) For XML Web services created using ASP.NET, the default XML namespace can be changed using WebServiceAttribute.Namespace property.

For more information about using attributes, see [<topic://cpconExtendingMetadataUsingAttributes>].