Can you please answer to the following questions to enlighten me about web services.

1. What is the lifecycle of web service ? When the class which represents my web service gets instanced and when it's start running (executing) ?
2. Is it there new instance created for every webMethod call ? And what happens if there are multiple simultaneous requests for same or different web method ?
3. When to open connection to remote resource, that the onnection is ready before any requests. And this connection must persist through whole lifetime of web service.

Thank you in advace for all answers.