Currently we reflect on in how far changing a web service's
interface can be done keeping it backwards compatible, i.e.
do not break running clients.
This sure is a broad topic, and if anyone can point me
to articles, discussions etc on this..
Going a bit more concrete, I think there should not be a
problem if you add a new operation, for example. But adding
a new data field in a bean class (part of some response)
is a problem, at least for a client using Axis-generated
client-stubs:
org.xml.sax.SAXException: Invalid element
in <BeanClass> - <newElement>
Any chances that this problem will be fixed in future releases?
(a .NET client using an old proxy-dll did not seem to have
a problem here, ignoring the new field)
How do other frameworks react on this?
What are other typical pitfalls, what should one keep in mind
when changing the interface of a web service? What can be
considered "safe", and what should be avoided? But then, you
probably cannot avoid a lot of things in reality..
Thanks for any help/ideas.
--
Florian Lindauer
