The WebMethodAttribute.MessageName property can be used to alias method or property names. The most common use of the WebMethodAttribute.MessageName property will be to uniquely identify polymorphic methods. By default, WebMethodAttribute.MessageName is set to the name of the XML Web service method. Therefore, if an XML Web service contains two or more XML Web service methods with the same name, you can uniquely identify the individual XML Web service methods by setting the WebMethodAttribute.MessageName to a name unique within the XML Web service, without changing the name of the actual method name in code.

When data is passed to an XML Web service it is sent in a request and when it is returned it is sent in a response. Within the request and response, the name used for the XML Web service method is its WebMethodAttribute.MessageName property.

The message name associated with an XML Web service method must be unique within the XML Web service.

If a new XML Web serivce method with the same name but different parameters is added after clients are calling the original method, a different message name should be specified for the new method but the original message name should be left as is to ensure compatability with existing clients.

Namespace: System.Web.Services
Assembly: System.Web.Services (in System.Web.Services.dll)
Assembly Versions: 1.0.5000.0, 2.0.0.0