Best practices for versioning your services with WCF?

Question

I'm starting to work with my model almost exclusively in WCF and wanted to get some practical approaches to versioning these services over time. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Answer 1

There is a good writeup on Craig McMurtry's WebLog. Its from 2006, but most of it is still relevant.

As well as a decision tree to walk through the choices, he shows how to implement those changes using Windows Communication Foundation

Answer 2

See "Versioning WCF Services: Part I" and "Versioning WCF Services: Part II".

See also:

• WCF Backwards Compatibility and Versioning Strategies – Part 1
• WCF Backward Compatibility and Versioning Strategies – Part 2
• WCF Backward Compatibility and Versioning Strategies – Part 3

Answer 3

While not an instant answer for you, I found the book Learning WCF very useful; in it there's a small section on versioning (which is similar to Craig McMurtry's advice posted by Espo). If you're looking for a general intro book, it's very good. Her website has lots of good stuff too: Das Blonde

Edit: No sure why her site isn't responding; it's been a while since I've visited, so maybe she shut it down. No sure.