I need to write a web service and am undecided as to whether I should use Perl or ASP.NET with Mono (Java is out of the running altogether). My biggest concern is compatibility; I don't know what kind of hosting the customer is willing to dish out for yet, so I want it to be able to run (with minimal modifications) on IIS or Apache. How good is Apache's mod_mono in terms of speed and reliability? Is implementing Perl's SOAP::Transport::HTTP::Apache module a nightmare? Is Perl going to cause trouble if the service's consumer is a C# program running on Windows? I'll give points to the most detailed answer, not the timeliest one.

Perl's soap::lite will talk to anybody! a few tweaks and it will talk to the pickiest soapers!

ASP is a dead end in microsoft land. I'd stay away, unless you have dozens of programmers to back you up tracking down MS bugs!

You shouldn't encounter compatibility problems. It's all just XML; so long as it's well-formed, it should be fine.

It is also amusing how willing some people are to make themselves look foolish, just to badmouth Microsoft.