how to set the user credentials for accessing an webservice

i have an webservive written where any user hit the url can acces th开发者_开发知识库e webservice.now i need to set username and password for the webservice so that before accessing the webservice they need to provide the user credentials only valid user would be allowed to access the webservice

how can i achive this functionality. is there any setting tat i need to do

any help would be great

thank you

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one way of imposing security to access your web service is to use HTTP security... this can be done at the level of of the web site, of the web server, hosting the web service. for example, IIS virtual directory's properties has the security tab that you can use either basic security or plain text or integrated windows security. this way you will protect the whole web site