Deprecating ASP.NET Web Methods

Question

I have some internal-facing ASP.NET web services that have had numerous API additions over the years. Some of the original web methods, while still available for consumption, have recommended replacements available. I would like to steer consuming clients toward using these new methods so I can retire and eventually remove their elders.

If this were a client API rather than a web service API, I'd just mark the offending methods with the obsolete attribute. But .NET attributes do not get serialized and are not visible to consuming developers when they add or refresh web references.

What techniques are recomended for obsoleting ASP.NET web methods? Is there anything built into the tooling (VS2005-2010)? I don't want to break any of the existing clients, so I can't simply remove the web methods outright or change their internal behavior to reprot their usage as erroneous.

Answer 1

Tim, the short answer to this is unfortunately that you have to contact those clients and communicate the change with them and agree on timelines etc. There might be something that you can do to smooth the process over for them, particularly if they are not IT savvy clients and had to get their applications built by external contractors.

You can butter this up any way you like for them really, from the system is going to be replaced, to we are doing it bigger, better and faster.

Additionally you can build in code to slow them down, NOT RECOMMENDED, but then when they inquire you can give them the, we don't support that system any longer, it has been replaced by system 'X'.

If the new methods you are talking about are still just web-methods, you can just point the old ones to the new ones, and let the clients use the old one.

Another option is to identify the clients stuck on the old methods, get their IP addresses and lock it down so only they can use it, this way you ensure new clients will not attempt to connect to the old methods.

Other than that, I cannot think of anything that will not be a pain or difficult for both yo and the client.