Debate sprang up at JAOO '07 around Bob Martin's assertion that "nowadays it is irresponsible for a developer to ship a line of code he has not executed in a unit test." In this InfoQ video, he debated with Jim Coplien on this and other topics, including Design by Contract vs. TDD and how much up-front architecture is needed to keep a system consistent with the business domain model.
In this article, Dennis Sosnoski questions the conventional wisdom that a contract-first approach to web services development, i.e. starting from WSDL, is superior to starting from code. He shows how the JiBX framework can be used to practice start-from-code development without incurring the disadvantages, specifically without coupling implementation and interface too tightly.
Christian Weyer of Thinktecture, announced the release of WSCF.blue a Visual Studio Add-in that enables contract first development of web services using WCF.
Following up on the debate of REST vs. WS-* discussed here last week, it is interesting to note a debate about "contracts" for RESTful services that has been picking up pace over the last few days.
In an article published on Martin Fowler's web site, Ian Robinson describes a new strategy for evolving contract versions in a community of service providers and consumers.
Arjen Poutsma has posted a step-by-step tutorial on contract-first Web service development.
