I am developing a web service with WCF that is intended to be exposed to multiple thrid party systems, potentially using a range of different technologies.
Assuming I have provided them a URL pointing to a valid WSDL 1.1 file, what languages using what tools can I reasonably expect to enable a thrid party developer to simply download the WSDL, generate his code and configuration and have it ‘just work’ with little or no modification?
I have done some Googling but I cannot find a definitive list.
Basically I want to gauge how much support I should be expected to be providing to help get a third party system integrating with my web service, based on the technology that they are using.
Thanks.
Pretty much all of the mainstream languages have support for WSDL 1.1, it’s the most prevalent WSDL specification in the wild.
“Out of the box” compatibility with your service hinges more on the complexity of your datatypes (simple vs structures, collections, maps), and whether you use any of the other web service artifacts (security, transactions, etc.).
SOAP web services are quite mainstream and there’s wide experience is supporting them.
One way to speed adoption for consumers (if that’s a goal) is to create a library that they can include that has already gone through the interfacing process and that you’ve tested to work. For example, if you were to create a Java client, you could provide a jar that already has the artifacts produced by wsimport so your users need only add their jar and call your service layer rather than the web service directly.