Does adding an operation to a WCF Service contract nessecerly means that all WCF client should update their references?

Question

I'll be more specific.

Lets say I have a contract defined for my WCF service. And I have two different WCF clients which reference to this service : "ClientA" and "ClientB".

Now , lets say I want to add an operation (method) to my service which only "ClientB" will use , Lets say I added this operation to the contract and "ClientB" updated its reference and we're all happy. Does clientA also need to update it's reference even though it is not using the new operation?

Answer 1

The client only needs to update his reference, if it's going to use the new Operation contract.

Check out this article: Versioning WCF Contracts

Answer 2

No, WCF web references are generated by the IDE very similarly to references to ASMX or other web services, which means that it breaks things down into a method inventory, such that the client calling code operates as though it were invoking a remote API. Therefore, if only new stuff that does not alter the expected existing functionality is added, then old clients do not need to update.