Updating an ADF Web Service Data Control When Service Structure or Location Change
- by Shay Shmeltzer
The web service data control in Oracle ADF gives you a simplified approach to consuming services in ADF applications, and now with ADF Mobile the usage of this service seems to be growing.
A frequent question we get is what happens if the service that I'm consuming changes - how do I update my data control?
Well, first we should mention that if you do a good design of your application before you actually code - then things like Web service method signature shouldn't change. The signature is the contract between the publisher and the consumer, and contracts shouldn't be broken.
But in reality things do change during development stages, so here is how you can update both method signatures and service location with the Web service data control:
After watching this video you might be tempted to not copy the WSDLs to your project - which lets you use the right click update on a data control. However there is a reason why the copy is on by default, it reduces network traffic when you are actually running your application since ADF doesn't need to go to the server to find out the service structure. So for runtime performance, you probably should keep the WSDL local.
I encourage you to further look into both the connections.xml file where your service location is saved, and the datacontrols.dcx file where its definition is kept to get an even deeper understanding of how ADF works underneath the declarative layers.
