After reading this, this and this I think I somewhat get what they mean with versioning data contracts. Is it so that the recommended approach is to have my data and message contracts implement an interface and set the DataContract(Name = “SameValue”) for different namespaces?? I would then create a new class with the same name and a different contract? If that is correct it’s almost too easy to be true. The reason I am asking is that I want to smoke test the client against the production service and fail startup if the contracts are newer than the service.
Does anyone have any further recommendations / readings?
Yes, that attribute allows for versioning of your contract.
Decent article for best practices on handling change in WCF.