> > There is nothing to fear, add a wsdl and if that was not enough, also add > web api. >
Anyone can go url?WSDL or url?singleEsdl and see the API, I did that to remind myself of what it looks like. I presume that's what tools for foreign clients will do. Adding a Web API will require a new project and public url, but that doesn't scare me. How many services are we talking about here? > One service with about 40 methods, of which about 20 are mostly used in real life. I'm starting to think I might have to make a Web API that exists in parallel with the old WCF service. Same data underneath, but published as two services in different styles, one old, one new(ish). I know that VS Web API projects can detect the accept type headers and automatically send back XML or JSON, which sounds neat, but in reality it's another piece of auto-configured "magic" plumbing that is a throwback to the old ASP.NET pipeline nightmare. Last year I spent a whole weekend trying to coerce the Web API to respond with XML shaped the way I wanted, and I eventually gave up in disgust as the plumbing sprang leaks and tangled with itself and I wrote a raw ashx handler which did all the work manually, and it was easier to read and maintain. I think I posted here last year to complain that the Web API projects were another Rube Goldberg Machine <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rube_Goldberg_machine> that betrayed their promise of simplifying things. *Greg K*
