avoiding XML serialization, different WSDL generation, soap serialization

[Ramunas Urbonas]

Hello,

I think my problem is interesting for most of developers who wish to
exchange actual business entities with webservices, not just xml stubs.

I can not use XML serialization, when generating wsdl, because some of
transmited entities have only getters. It is required by our framework and
cannot be avoided (to ensure data consistency in most cases).

How do I exchange business entities in that case? I found several solutions,
basically they all imply serializing my classes with soap/binary formatters
and passing parameters as XmlElements, strings or byte arrays. That implies:
1. versioning problems (but that can be avoided with extra work),
2. anonymous parametes (any serialized object will be passed as
XmlElement, or any other selected transfer type. Type validation will be
performed only during run time, which leads to bugs).
3. using XML serialization either way, just ussing "always XML
serializable" format for parameters.

How else could this problem be addressed? Suggestions are very welcome..

regards,
Ramunas Urbonas

 

[Dino Chiesa [Microsoft]]

Rather than transmitting the actual entities, have you considered using an
Adapter (GoF 139) or Visitor (331) or Memento (283) ?

-D