Referencing web service complex data type within a second web service (like a delegate)

[Mike Dearman]

Hi,
I am trying to figure out if ASP.NET XML Web Services and the WSDL
standard can handle this type of scenario:

I have two web services, and one consumer client application. Lets
call web service 1 "basews", and web service 2 "custom", and the
client app "client".

I want basews to define a delegate of sorts (where the delegate
signature contains complex data types as arguments and return types),
and then custom ws would conform to the basews delegate signatures, so
that within client, I can call them similar to how delegates actually
work in .NET (with the obvious overhead of SOAP, etc).


If basews has the following pseudo-structure (VB'ish) :

-----------------
Class basews
<WebMethod()> Public Function getComplexDataType(byval req as
MyRequest) as MyDataType
...
End Class

Public Class MyDataType
Public field as String
...
End Class

Public class MyRequest
Public field as Integer
...
End Class
-----------------

where MyDataType and MyRequest (really can be more complex) are added
to basews WSDL automatically by .NET.


Can I create "custom" ws like this:

-----------------
Class custom
<WebMethod()> Public Function customGetComplexDataType(byval req as
basews.MyRequest) as basews.MyDataType
...
End Class
-----------------


such that within "client", it treats the return type of both web
service's methods as the same type? Or if this is not possible, is
there a way of at least being able to treat
basews.MyDataType/MyRequest and custom.MyDataType/MyRequest the same
so that I only have to write one routine to populate/read MyDataType
and MyRequest within "client"?

This is going to be used with dynamic web service binding techniques
so that I can take an arbitrary WSDL and method names that conform to
certain signatures (like delegates) and be able to call them
appropriately.

Thanks for the replies. Also, if you could copy me at 'mdearman
NOSPAM at libera.com' I would be grateful so I don't accidently miss
any replies.

 

[Mike Dearman]

OK, I found an article in MSDN discussing how to "share types" between
web services by manually modifying the ASP.NET web service
Reference.vb. However, this is not very flexible, as it really
hinders updating any web references without manual editing. Our
customers will not want to do this manually.

Does anyone know of any tools or features of VS.NET 2003 to help with
this problem? Or anyone willing to share experiences of using this
approach?

Thanks,
Mike