Can WSDL 2.0 (or similar) be used to generate a web service boilerplate?

Question

I apologize if if this is a bonehead question.

I've used WSDL to generate code to talk to web services, but my question is about using it to actually generate web services.

Let's say that I have a device that is going to communicate with a web service. The web service in question doesn't actually exist and is out of my control. That is, the party wishing to process messages from my device must implement the service.

The service in this case is extremely basic. It's simply a small collection of methods that receive messages and return status codes. It's basically a middleman between my device and 3rd party software.

It would be really cool if I could supply something like a WSDL 2.0 document that they could then use to actually generate the boilerplate code for the service and methods they are required to implement...preferably in Java (Axis) and .NET friendly frameworks.

In other words, I want to use WSDL to generate the service, not the client. Or maybe I don't want WSDL at all. What techniques would you recommend to make this as painless as possible?

Answer 1

SvcUtil.exe for the Windows Communication Foundation technology in .NET 3.0+ can do some of what you're asking, i.e. generation of contract interfaces and basic client code using a predetermined WSDL as input.

Now, this will not fully generate the actual service, just the contract interface. I don't know of an easy way to do this as it is probably not a very common case. Essentially what you're asking is a slightly more automated version of what Visual Studio does when you create a class and use the "Implement interface" feature (which I believe is accomplished mostly through VS templates).