Versioning of Web Services

[James Wilson <wi...@ociweb.com>]

Does anyone have any good resources you can direct me to regarding versioning of
web services?  What strategies are recommended in the schema? What about changes
in the WSDL messages and port bindings that effect the clients?
  -- deprecation of methods?
  -- deployment strategies?

I appreciate any links you can send my way!

Thanks,

-James

How Axis 1.2 locate java classes for a service?

[Zheng Li <zl...@it.swin.edu.au>]

I have installed the Axis in Tomcat and the directory hierarchy is like
this:

D
|-Apache Software Foundation
|  |-jakarta-tomcat-5.5.9
|    |-webapps
|      |-axis
|        |-WEB-INF
|          |-classes

When I deploy a service using a java class, do I have to copy that java
class file into the folder: "D:\Apache Software
Foundation\jakarta-tomcat-5.5.9\webapps\axis\WEB-INF\classes" ?? Or just put
the class in a directory in the %AXISCLASSPATH%?? In my machine,
%AXISCLASSPATH% does not include "D:\Apache Software
Foundation\jakarta-tomcat-5.5.9\webapps\axis\WEB-INF\classes" directory.

I found Axis 1.2 only search the java class files in the D:\Apache Software
Foundation\jakarta-tomcat-5.5.9\webapps\axis\WEB-INF\classes, not in the
directories in the %AXISCLASSPATH%. Is that true???

Looking forward to your reply, guys!

Many Thnx

Zheng

Re: Versioning of Web Services

[Anne Thomas Manes <at...@gmail.com>]

A few recommendations:

- I suggest making WSDL operations immutable. If you need to make a
significant change to the operation, simply create a new one rather
than changing the old one. If you can convert old message formats to
new message formats (and vice versa) using default values, then deploy
an intermediary (either as a proxy or as a handler) that transforms
the incoming old messages to the new format and redirect to the new
operation and transform outgoing new messages to the old format.

- XML Schema supports extensibility, although there are limits. See
this excellent article [1] by Dave Orchard for a detailed explanation.
Keep in mind, though, that programming languages like Java aren't
nearly as extensible as XML Schema, and they don't take well to new
elements and types popping up unexpectedly.

[1] http://www.pacificspirit.com/Authoring/Compatibility/ProvidingCompatibleSchemaEvolution.html

Regards,
Anne

On 8/17/05, James Wilson <wi...@ociweb.com> wrote:
> Does anyone have any good resources you can direct me to regarding versioning of
> web services?  What strategies are recommended in the schema? What about changes
> in the WSDL messages and port bindings that effect the clients?
>  -- deprecation of methods?
>  -- deployment strategies?
> 
> I appreciate any links you can send my way!
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> -James
> 
> 
> 
>