Aaron Skonnard, from Pluralsight, has written a great 2-part article on developing Contract-First Web Services.

I’ve had the privilege of getting my hands on both of the articles before they were released (the first was recently released, the second is still pending) and used them as a strong resource when developing a Web Service I’ve been working on for the past few months (on the side).

I am going to echo Aaron’s complaint that tool support for contract-first development is limited (regarding Web Services anyway) and while the WSContractFirst tool he mentions is nice as it integrates fully with Visual Studio .NET, it leaves a little to be desired. I found that once I wanted to change my WSDL (my contract) I either had to re-create the entire thing, or make my changes manually and then circumvent the convenience offered by the tool and use the VS.NET-supplied Web Service proxy generator (wsdl.exe).
Admittedly I never tried using a WSDL editor, I just did it by hand (a pain!), so perhaps my frustration is self-generated. Either way I think I would like to try my hand at creating a WSDL generating tool that integrates with VS.NET. But I wouldn’t like to try too hard, for several reasons:
1. Time
2. According to Aaron, Visual Studio 2005 (Whidbey) is going to contain some enhancements in this area already. So do I really want to re-invent the yet-to-be-invented wheel?
3. Did I mention time?

If you read this and have any suggestions, please let me know!