Conforming web services to an updated contract

• US 20070143501A1
• Filed: 12/15/2005
• Published: 06/21/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 12/15/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Gibson, William, Pasha, Azmat
• Granted Patent: US 7,890,659 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/246
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/30 Creation or generation of source code
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/60 Software deployment
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/65 Updates security arrangements therefor G06F21/57
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management

Abstract

Example embodiments address current problems associated with changes in service contracts by providing automated mechanisms to update portions of an existing service implementation. For example, one mechanism modifies an implementation'"'"'s skeleton (e.g., methods, method signatures, data structures, etc.) in order to conform to changes to an NPDL (e.g., WSDL) contract. In such an embodiment, the developer may only need to make the necessary changes, if any, to the business logic, which typically will not be known from the contract definition. Accordingly, such automatic modifications to the implementation facilitate a developer'"'"'s adopting a contract based approach to web service development.

Claims

1. Within a computing system that includes a service implementation of a web service contract document, which defines how the service implementation is to communicate with a particular service, a method of automatically changing at least a portion of the service implementation in response to changes in the web service contract document, the method comprising:

an act of receiving a web service implementation that has been constructed in accordance with a first web service contract document that describes how the web service implementation is to communicate with one or more services;

an act of receiving a second web service contract document, which defines one or more changes to the first web service contract that affect the behavior of the web service implementation in such a way that the web service implementation cannot communicate with one or more endpoints that expect the second contract to be implemented;

an act of identifying the one or more changes between the web service implementation and the second web service contract document; and

based on the one or more changes identified, a step for automatically modifying at least a portion of the web service implementation to conform at least partially with the second web service contract document.

2. The method in accordance with claim 1, wherein the act of identifying the one or more changes to the web service implementation comprises:

comparing one or more portions of the web service implementation with one or more portions of the second web service contract document.

3. The method in accordance with claim 1, wherein the modification of the at least a portion of the web service implementation preserves one or more portions of one or more methods included therein.

4. The method in accordance with claim 3, wherein the one or more portions of one or more methods included within the web service implementation is preserved by automatically commenting them out.

5. The method in accordance with claim 1, further comprising:

generating skeleton code based on the second web service contract document;

comparing the web service implementation with the skeleton code; and

based on the comparison, automatically modifying at least a portion of the web service implementation to conform with the skeleton code.

6. The method in accordance with claim 1, wherein automatically modifying at least a portion of the web service implementation to conform with the second web service contract document includes:

updating the web service implementation binding name or binding namespace if either one are different from the second web service contract.

7. The method in accordance with claim 1, wherein automatically modifying at least a portion of the web service implementation to conform with the second web service contract document includes:

preserving a web method for an operation that is not included in the second web service contract document.

8. The method in accordance with claim 1, wherein automatically modifying at least a portion of the web service implementation to conform with the second web service contract document further includes:

adding a method with method signature and attributes for operations that are included in the second web service contract but not in the web service implementation.

9. The method in accordance with claim 1, wherein automatically modifying at least a portion of the web service implementation to conform with the second web service contract document includes:

modifying a method signature for web methods that match an operation.

10. The method in accordance with claim 1, wherein automatically modifying at least a portion of the web service implementation to conform with the second web service contract document includes:

adding an attribute to a method such that the method is exposed as an operation.

11. The method in accordance with claim 1, wherein the first and second web service contract documents are Web Service Description Language (WSDL) documents.

12. The method in accordance with claim 1 further comprising:

exposing the modified at least a portion of the web service implementation using a business logic input interface in order to allow a developer to perform at least one of;

provide appropriate business logic for web methods added to the web service implementation that correspond to operations present in the second web service contract document but absent in the first web service contract document;

modify business logic for web methods whose signature or method type has been modified to conform to the second web service contract document; and

remove web methods that are no longer mapped to operations as a result of the operations being present in the first web service contract document but absent in the second web service contract document.

13. A computer program product for use in a computing system that includes a web service implementation of a web service contract document, which defines how the web service implementation is to communicate with a particular service, the computer program product used in implementing a method of automatically changing at least a portion of the web service implementation in response to changes in the web service contract document, the computer program product comprising one or more computer-readable media having stored thereon computer-executable instructions that, when executed by one or more processors of the computing system, cause the computing system to perform the following:

receive a web service implementation that has been constructed in accordance with a first web service contract document that describes how the web service implementation is to communicate with one or more services;

receive a second web service contract document, which defines one or more changes to the first web service contract that affect the behavior of the web service implementation in such a way that the web service implementation cannot communicate with one or more endpoints that expect the second contract to be implemented;

identify the one or more changes between the web service implementation and the second web service contract document; and

based on the one or more changes identified, automatically modify at least a portion of the web service implementation to conform at least partially with the second web service contract document.

14. The computer program product in accordance with claim 13, wherein the computer executable instruction that are configured to automatically modify at least a portion of the web service implementation to conform with the second web service contract document further include instruction configured to:

update the web service binding attribute if the binding name or the binding namespace are different from the second web service contract.

15. The computer program product in accordance with claim 13, wherein the computer executable instructions that are configured to automatically modify at least a portion of the web service implementation to conform with the second web service contract document further includes instructions configured to:

comment out a web method attribute for an operation that is not included in the second web service contract document.

16. The computer program product in accordance with claim 13, wherein the computer executable instruction that are configured to automatically modify at least a portion of the web service implementation to conform with the second web service contract document further includes instructions configured to:

add a web method with method signature and attributes for operations that are included in the second web service contract but not in the web service implementation.

17. Within a computing system that includes a web service implementation of a web service contract document, which defines how the web service implementation is to communicate with a particular service, a method for automatically changing at least a portion of the service implementation in response to changes in the web service contract document, the method comprising a step for:

automatically modifying at least a portion of a web service implementation to conform at least partially with a second web service contract by identifying changes to a first web service contract document that describes how the web service implementation is to communicate with one or more services, the changes made in the second web service contract affecting the behavior of the web service implementation in such a way that the web service implementation cannot communicate with one or more endpoints that expect the second contract to be implemented.

18. The method of claim 17, wherein automatically modifying at least a portion of the web service implementation to conform with the second web service contract document further includes:

modifying a method signature for web methods that match an operation.

19. The method of claim 17, wherein automatically modifying at least a portion of the web service implementation to conform with the second web service contract document includes:

removing an attribute to a method such that the method is not removed from the web service implementation, but the method is also not exposed as an operation.

20. The method in accordance with claim 17 further comprising:

exposing the modified at least a portion of the web service implementation using a business logic input interface in order to allow a developer to perform at least one of;

provide appropriate business logic for web methods added to the web service implementation that correspond to operations present in the second web service contract document but absent in the first web service contract document;

modify business logic for web methods whose signature or method type has been modified to conform to the second web service contract document; and

remove web methods that are no longer mapped to operations as a result of the operations being present in the first web service contract document but absent in the second web service contract document.