Consuming WCF service for development in advance?

Hi
I was asked this question - How do you start consuming a WCF service in advance (read before being implemented/deployed)?

I couldn't think of a very convincing answer and said probably we can generate a proxy and provide some stubs ..etc... you got the idea. Even I was not convinced with myself. The question do make sense as presentation and services are different tiers. One should not be waiting on other in development at least.

Anyways, so I have been thinking since then and need some pointers on this from experts out there. Any suggestions / aproaches?.

Thanks

AJ

Hey,

I haven't started playing with WCF yet, but from what I understand, your approach does seem valid. Basically, stub out the contract that will be exposed by the WCF Endpoint, and from there, you can develop against it.

There is more information on this here:

http://aspalliance.com/1154_Start_De...n_Foundation.2

Hope that helps!!

Gary

OK, let's mince words here. Before deployment I understand, but did you actually mean to say before implementation as well? Because if you then create a stub for this non-existent WCF service, you're essentially dictating the contract. That's for the developer to decide. Hey, I'm all for contract-first design, but that's going a bit too far :p

To do it before it's been deployed, I'd generate a proxy from the WSDL and use it. Even if it isn't fully available, at least a contract can be available for us to use.

To do it before it's been implemented, I won't bother with a proxy or any sort of a service reference, just create a DummyMethod() that returns hardcoded values until the service is ready.