Question

Is there a way to have required DataMember’s within a DataContract to be organized into groups so that you really only require group one or group two but no both to be provided?

I am looking to see if there is functionality similar to Workflow Activity validation where you can flag InArgument’s with a RequiredArgument and then use OverloadGroup attribute to put these into groups so that only the arguments in one of the specified groups are required.

Answer 1

It is not possible out of the box with DataContractSerializer but you can switch to XmlSerializer and use xsd:choice (XmlChoiceIdentifierAttribute) but be aware that this will affect your data class beacuse this construct has its own requirements.