Web Services any easier in Notes 8?

Having created and consumed a lot of web services in MS Visual Studio 2005, I have to say that the Domino web services stuff in ND7 is like taking a step back in time. I’m glad they are finally putting it in the IDE instead of having us try to muck up something in Java (and then fail because of JDK issues) or to use the long unsupported SoapConnect thing…but it’s still a far cry from being easy to implement. In VS2005 it’s so easy to do, and consuming is just as easy. Please tell me that ND8 has major improvements in this area. I’m looking at the 7 help docs for web services and it’s ugly. I have a need right now to create a web service for Domino data and I’m considering just creating an agent to output the data as XML and parsing it from my C# code. Or creating the service in C# and using the Notes COM object to retrieve the data. Either of which is more straight forward than what I’m seeing in the help doc. I’m not new to Notes by any stretch, so I know this is something most of us have been wanting for a long time. Hopefully it’s matured in 8? Anybody?