The more service-oriented computing becomes mainstream, the more versioning of service contracts becomes an issue in a community of service providers and consumers. In an article published on Martin Fowler's web site, Ian Robinson describes a new strategy for evolving service contract versions. Ian starts by describing different strategies for creating backwards- and forwards-compatible schemas and discusses the usage of Schematron to reduce a consumer's dependency on a specific schema version. Buildling on this, the notion of contracts driven by consumers' needs (instead of providers' capabilities) is introduced.
Facilitating the Spread of Knowledge and Innovation in Professional Software Development
Write for InfoQTopics
Helpful links
QCon AI New York 2025
Go from AI demos to real engineering impact. Learn to embed LLMs, govern & scale securely.
SOLD OUT!
QCon London 2026
Learn what works in AI, architecture, data, security & FinTech.
Early Bird ends Dec 9.
QCon AI Boston
Learn how leading engineering teams run AI in production—reliably, securely, and at scale.
Launch pricing ends Dec 9.