Yesterday I received my copy of CODE magazine with an article by Christian Weyer covering contract first web service design and his free tool WSCF (web service contract first) for Visual Studio .NET. After a few bumpy stumbles because I was reading and following examples at 2am, I got a nice example up and running.

All I can say is: TOTALLY AWESOME!

This is the way web services, especially complex services that require complete platform independence, should be built. The common [WebMethod] asmx approach in VS .NET works for small projects and quick and dirty prototypes, but to build serious web services in a service oriented architecture (SOA), you should really consider taking Christian's advice and design by schema and contract first.

Anyone building web services owes it to themselves to try this free tool.