CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

we plan on calling the CiviCRM API via maybe a webservice or some form does it ovver anything like this.  We are not using PHP at the moment, mostly .NET but we want to be able to get to the CiviCRM database and fields.  What else is the best way to acheive this?

Now the rest interface it seems to be something you invoke via a browser but what I need is more I will have a .nett page with a username and password field and I want to authenticate not against the Civi account but against a custom username and password field on each record.  But it seems like I would be doing a search but showing it in the URL? is there any other way? 

I also upon login would get a few feidls for that record like name address etc.  I am wondering what would be the smoothest way to do this? are there any web services offered?  it there something we can do with like PHP on the Civi side to expose some of the fields?  or does it make sense or is it possible to go directly to the database and get the values?

I feel like not to many use .NET with Civi and maybe I'm trying to do something that just isn't meant to do given the restrictions but I'm not sure, the REST is slightly promising though.