Java Reference
In-Depth Information
</messaging>
</microsoft.web.services3>
▪ Beware of generated WSDLs. It is very easy to produce a web service quickly when you
write a simple Java or .NET class and toss a couple of annotations on it. But you must
not forget that the WSDL represents the clearest aspect of the contract between consumer
and producer. If you are in a business-to-business scenario, discuss the WSDL to make
sure that you can curtail any difficult discussions about interoperability problems later.
But the WSDL is meant to be produced by machines and read by machines, and can be
very tedious to write. What I usually do is write a class, generate the WSDL only the first
time, and then save a copy within my service. I modify the WSDL so that it's clearer and
doesn't contain any extraneous or vendor-specific code, and I can then make small tweaks
to it without too much effort. This of course leads to the problem of ensuring that your
implementation and your WSDL are in sync, but unit tests should allow you to handle this
quickly.
