I'm in the beginning stages of designing a mechanism to share and integrate data between 2 software systems. Each software system uses a large scale relational database. One is written in asp/vb and uses sql server 2000.
The other, i'm not familiar with the specifics, but I want a solution that will work between heterogenous systems. I'm basically wondering if anyone can let me in on the most current, popular solutions for doing this type of thing.
I would like to use .NET and i've explored web services - passing data using xml, but i'm very new to it. Does anyone know of a good article pertaining to this? Or.. does anyone have any ideas?

You could consider Microsofts Biztalk server. That primarily what it's for.