web services - Adding methods to the webservice: do old clients need to update web references?

Question

ProductA uses our only web service, which is a separate deployment from ProductA. We deploy both to production.

Later, we're writing ProductB. During that effort, we add a new method to our only web service. That new method wasn't in the WSDL when ProductA shipped. We make no changes to ProductA in development.

When we deploy ProductB to production, we also deploy (to production) the new version of our only web service (to the same endpoint URL where ProductA is expecting to find it). We don't re-deploy ProductA to production.

The WSDL for our only web service has changed in production, but the signatures of the methods being consumed by ProductA have not changed. They're still in the WSDL.

Will ProductA have any problems due to our upgrading our only web service in this way?

Do you have to upgrade a client of a webservice if the webservice changed in such a way that left the original client's methods unchanged?

Answer 1

No. As long as you left the methods that Product A uses alone, you do not have to update Product A's copy of the WebReference.