I am currently calling a web service that returns a service defined class which I am interpreting in my application. I’m considering asking the vendor of this web service to add a property to this class which will make my life as well as their other clients lives a lot easier. To be clear I’m not asking them to modify existing behaviour or properties, so this would extend existing functionality.
My question is, if they add this property to the class, will it adversely affect existing clients’ applications?
It can potentially be a problem, yes:
It can also work… it just needs testing / planning.
A safer option (if you have complex deployment that can’t all go at once) is to consider the API sealed and add a new ‘v2’ end-point etc.