Article: "Code First" Web Services Reconsidered

by Stefan Tilkov on Aug 27, 2007 |

The most common approach to web services development is to start from code, and generate an XML Schema and WSDL definition. Most web service advocates consider this "wrong", the reason being that this often leads to interoperability problems and a very tight couping between implementation and interface artifacts. Instead, they argue one should start with a WSDL file, and then generate implementation code – possibly for different consumer and provider frameworks.

In a new InfoQ article, Dennis Sosnoski questions this conventional wisdom, and explains that most of the problems with the code-first (or "start-from-code approach, as he calls it) are rooted in the first generation tooling. 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.

See the article for more information.

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wow, a pragmatic approach to web services? by Jeff Payne Posted

Re: wow, a pragmatic approach to web services? by anjan bacchu Posted

Re: wow, a pragmatic approach to web services? by Rajbir Grewal Posted

wow, a pragmatic approach to web services? by Jeff Payne

Great article! Regardless of ones view point on the whole wsdl-fist vs code-first debate, one has to admit that sometimes it's just much more practical to start with the interface in code, especially if it's already been written and needs to be exposed as a service. Plus, I much rather deal with a generated WSDL a few times in the lifetime of a project than deal with generated source code day in and day out.

One thing that Dennis doesn't mention is reuse. I seems like it would be a lot easier to reuse source code designed by the developer and not generated by a tool.

Re: wow, a pragmatic approach to web services? by anjan bacchu

Hi There,

I am working on a "CONTRACT FIRST or WSDL first" project and find that the generated classes don't have an equals or hashcode generated for them. It would be nice if I could somehow get the WEBLOGIC 9.2 java code generator to do something like that.

BR,
~A

Re: wow, a pragmatic approach to web services? by Rajbir Grewal

Good point of view, I would also like to mention XmlBean binding also.This can be used for Document/Letral style web services. While working on web service on both BEA Workshop and Rational Developer
I would say its much more easer to develop code first web service using document style in BEA workshop. RSA is more geared towards RPC/literal style. It would be nice if RSA can in corporate XmlBean binding (java2wsdl)in there WSDL generation from code. Using WSDL first (Contract first) approach is little complex and complexity will increase as we try to expose more operations in WSDL.