[wil421]

WSDLs will tell your tools how to build the SOAP XML for you. It will even give you things like required fields and field lengths. When you need to update something just update the WSDL and regenerate your messages.

I love REST and JSON. The WSDL is one of the only things I like about SOAP. I’ve had issues where people didn’t give me the correct JSON or they update their scheme without notifying everyone and it breaks. You still need to notify people about WSDL changes.

[smhinsey]

I have brought this up a few times in various organizations and most of the reaction has been along the lines of "ugh, XML bad!" but a few have pointed out that there are several things in the JSON ecosystem which have evolved to basically fill the same niche. Swagger or whatever they call it now is usually the first thing that comes up. I haven't really had the experience of having an API to work with that just handed over a swagger file in the same way so many did with .wsdls back in the day, though.