WSDL-First development with WCF

WSDL-First development with WCF : EasyCoded

WSDL-First development with WCF : EasyCoded — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 18:38:40 GMT

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re: WSDL-First development with WCF

Tareq Ali — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 13:15:14 GMT

Thanks for the great article, however I don't agree with you that using wsdl files means client comes first. when you design your wsdl file this mean this is the server contract and client should abide to it

re: WSDL-First development with WCF

DotNetInterop — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 03:02:16 GMT

I certainly did not want to imply that using a WSDL file means you must build the client first. However, I disagree that the WSDL file is a "server contract." In fact it is a contract, an interface definition, and as a first-class artifact in the system design, it is impossible to assign ownership of it purely to server-side assets or client-side assets. The WSDL defines the link between them, and so is part of both, or is equally independent of both.

The Office Research Schema provides the counter-evidence to your statement that "using a WSDL file means this is the server contract and the client should abide to it."

re: WSDL-First development with WCF

Jarkko Enden — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 12:55:46 GMT

Hi, good article but I agree with Tareq. I would guess you are quite alone with your "WSDL is not a server contract" and "it is impossible to assign ownership of it" statements.

1. The service interface (WSDL) must have an owner. It is owned by the service provider and used by the service consumer (terms server and client are often used). Shared ownership is not possible as the service provider must define the services it provides and the consumers/clients must respect that.

2. You are confusing or misusing the term "client". The fact that a workstation running Office is able to act as a service provider doesn't (or shouldn't) lead you to the conclusion that the WSDL can be defined by the "client". The clients of the web service are the parties who call the web service. They can run server OS and have 32 processors, but they are still clients of the web service and have no say on the WSDL that is published by the service provider (i.e. server).

re: WSDL-First development with WCF

DotNetInterop — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 23:03:50 GMT

@Jarkko - thanks for the thoughts.

You have stated that the WSDL must have an owner, and then you assert that it is owned by the service provider. But you are simply asserting - it is not clear that you are correct. The counter-example I provide - MS Office providing the service interface - is nowhere refuted or discounted in your comment?

Also, I am quite clear on the meaning of Client and Server. From your comment, it seems that you are not clear on the role that the MS Office application plays, while running on a desktop. It is not the service provider. It is the service consumer. It consumes a service as defined by the WSDL published by the Office Research SDK. Office is a consumer.

Now, it is also true that the MS Office team hosts a research service online that conforms to that WSDL. But that is one specific instance of the general WSDL. The instance does not define the WSDL. The instance conforms to the WSDL.

re: WSDL-First development with WCF

Dave Harvey — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 12:21:13 GMT

I agree with the original poster - the WSDL doesn't "belong" to either. To prove the point, I hope to use this method (if I can get it working!) to implement an an International Standard for medical document exchange, which is itself defined by WSDL files, which BOTH clients and servers need to abide by. This WSDL was written to convey the required information independently of any particular implementations, so that it works equally well with Microsoft, java etc.

re: WSDL-First development with WCF

DotNetInterop — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 21:06:12 GMT

Dave Harvey, that is a service-oriented philosophy!

re: WSDL-First development with WCF

Gary Kellett — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 12:54:54 GMT

I also agree with the original poster. The WSDL simply defines an agreement between two endpoints stating what messages they will be sending between each other.

The primary application could be a consumer of a web service, where you may want to allow the consumer to speak to any number of different web services using the same agreed methods and data definitions, or indeed the web service where you may want to allow many consumers to call it.

WSDL-First in WCF, versus WSDL-First in ASMX

All About Interop — Fri, 29 May 2009 17:50:23 GMT

I wanted to point something out regarding the WSDL-First item I posted yesterday . This is a look at

re: WSDL-First development with WCF

Alexander Oss — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 02:12:50 GMT

I am indebted to you for posting a sample of the generated interface, because when I ran svcutil.exe against the WSDL I was provided, the OperationContractAttribute came out a little differently:

[System.ServiceModel.OperationContractAttribute(Action="http://www.hotel.info/HDE_ReservationPushService/V1_0/PushReservation", ReplyAction="*")]

Notice the darn asterisk there? I didn't, at first, and whenever I built my service, the operation was not available (the service-generated WSDL didn't even mention it). Then I saw that your example did not have an asterisk, and I manually modified the svcutil-generated code to use a blank instead of an asterisk, and the service-generated WSDL was finally full to the brim with the operation and all the data structures necessary.

I found this article:

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/wcf/thread/41f5fe72-3ab3-4741-867e-a93119fe62aa

in which someone else encounters the same problem.

...So, is it really a problem for svcutil.exe to create server-side-usable interfaces? What happened to my good friend "wsdl.exe /serverInterface"?

re: WSDL-First development with WCF

Ramon Buckland — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 16:19:06 GMT

Thank you also for this good example.

I have been writing a proof of concept of WSRP 2.0 using this exact method, and so far it has worked.

The Tip by Alexander Oss, was also invaluable. I too found that the svcutil generated the ReplyAction="*" which did stop it from generating the WSDL. Removing this from the entry resolved the problem.

Once I have the working example of WSRP 2.0 with a .NET service I will post a blog about it.

Cheers

Ramon Buckland ( ramon at thebuckland.com )