Web Service Issue

[Band of Multi]

The Application that my company built runs off of Web Services. The problem
that we are having is that there are three programmers developing on these
Web Services at the same time. When ever one person creates or edits a web
service, it seems like the other web services don't get updated. In order to
get the Web Service to work, I would need to change something, rebuild, and
then update my web referance in our app. We have to do this everytime
someone updates a web referance and it's tought to get anything done when we
are updating our web referances. Any help will be much appreciated.

Thanks,
--
Newbie

[Michael Barnhart]

Hello Band,

If I am understanging you correctly, you are not designing your services
first. You are just coding and hoping that they work.

Step one is to define what business function each service is supposed to
perform.
Step two is to define what message that function needs. Both request and
response.
Step three is to create the shell that has those messages.

At that point you can update the web reference and the interface should not
change.

You can then do the underlying coding and test the functionality. With out
changing the messages!

Sorry, for getting on my soapbox, pun intended.

The Application that my company built runs off of Web Services. The
problem that we are having is that there are three programmers
developing on these Web Services at the same time. When ever one
person creates or edits a web service, it seems like the other web
services don't get updated. In order to get the Web Service to work,
I would need to change something, rebuild, and then update my web
referance in our app. We have to do this everytime someone updates a
web referance and it's tought to get anything done when we are
updating our web referances. Any help will be much appreciated.

Thanks,

[Band of Multi]

I'm sorry, I stated my question poorly. I'll try to explain a little better.

Say that there are 2 developers that are developing Web Services from within
the same project (which links to a web site hosted on our development server).

Programmer 1 makes a change to an existing Web method and builds the project.
Meanwhile, Programmer 2 also has the same project open and he makes a change
to a different Web Service in the same project. He then, builds the project,
but at that point his cache doesn't have the latest code for Programmer 1 and
so it overwrites the file with the one from his (Programmer 2's) cache.

At this point, Programmer 1 has lost any changes (on the server, not locally
in his cache) to what he had just changed.

We believe this is a Cache issue. We just don't know where to take care of
this. What's the best way to take care of this?

Is there any way around this issue?

"Michael Barnhart" wrote:

Hello Band,

If I am understanging you correctly, you are not designing your services
first. You are just coding and hoping that they work.

Step one is to define what business function each service is supposed to
perform.
Step two is to define what message that function needs. Both request and
response.
Step three is to create the shell that has those messages.

At that point you can update the web reference and the interface should not
change.

You can then do the underlying coding and test the functionality. With out
changing the messages!

Sorry, for getting on my soapbox, pun intended.

The Application that my company built runs off of Web Services. The
problem that we are having is that there are three programmers
developing on these Web Services at the same time. When ever one
person creates or edits a web service, it seems like the other web
services don't get updated. In order to get the Web Service to work,
I would need to change something, rebuild, and then update my web
referance in our app. We have to do this everytime someone updates a
web referance and it's tought to get anything done when we are
updating our web referances. Any help will be much appreciated.

Thanks,

[Mark Newmister]

>>You can then do the underlying coding and test the functionality. With out

changing the messages!

As Michael points out, the goal is to create your services in such a way
that you don't have to change the message interface.

In addition to what Michael suggests, I am finding it much easier to
maintain web services by over-simplifying the service interface itself.
Instead of having several well defined/designed web interfaces, try to
simplify the web interface to be as general as possible and move your well
defined functions/interfaces into helper classes (I think Michael is
advocating this helper class approach also). In other words, just think of
your web service interface as being a conduit to your helper classes. You
can turn 10 web method calls into just 1 general method call and handle the
logic in the helper classes. Just pass in all of the request information
via *one* XML parameter and return responses via XML. An element inside the
request XML can define the *real* function that you want to perform...your
helper classes can parse this out. This approach allows you to expand web
service functionality without changing the reference interface.



"Band of Multi" <Ba*********@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:04**********************************@microsof t.com... The Application that my company built runs off of Web Services. The
problem
that we are having is that there are three programmers developing on these
Web Services at the same time. When ever one person creates or edits a
web
service, it seems like the other web services don't get updated. In order
to
get the Web Service to work, I would need to change something, rebuild,
and
then update my web referance in our app. We have to do this everytime
someone updates a web referance and it's tought to get anything done when
we
are updating our web referances. Any help will be much appreciated.

Thanks,
--
Newbie

[Michael Barnhart]

Hello Band,

Understood, Sorry I assumed something I see locally all of the time.

Hope you get a better answer than I have. All I know of is to make one person
the authority, and have the other(s) copy out code and then send back to
the authority the updated functions. Who then copies this back into the master.

Given what is in Office 2003 for multiple people working on one document,
I can expect to see this in the future but do not know what supports it today.
Like I said, hope someone corrects this if it is wrong.

Have a good day.

I'm sorry, I stated my question poorly. I'll try to explain a little
better.