Maintaining multiple versions of a web service

[roma2000]

Hello everyone!<BR><BR>I have a logistics problem. I need some suggestions regarding my web service set-up.<BR><BR>THE SET-UP:<BR>I have a large ASP.NET application using SQL 2000 database. The data stored in DB needs to be exposed through a web service. The application is still in development, but it's already being used, a first version of the web service is also already developed and being used by a number of remotely hosted<BR>clients. The application and the database still undergo some changes because it's still in development.<BR><BR>THE PROBLEM:<BR>I am working on the next version of the web service for that application, but the problem is that my methods return data in different format than the original web service. Some methods have also been removed. I am sure it will be the case for all next versions of this web service too.<BR><BR>What I need is an efficient way of maintaining a couple of versions of the web service so that the existing clients that use older versions have enough time to change their applications to use the newer version.<BR><BR>My web service is using stored procedures to return data from DB, so I need to maintain stored procs. separately for each version.<BR><BR>SOME OF MY IDEAS:<BR><BR>separating stored procedures for each web service version:<BR>WS100_getnews (gets news for web service version 1.0)<BR>WS152_getnews (gets news for web service version 1.52)<BR>WS201_getnews (gets news for web service version 2.01)<BR><BR>separating the web services by url's:<BR>http://www.mydomain.com/WSNEWS/100/news.asmx (web service version 1.0)<BR>http://www.mydomain.com/WSNEWS/152/news.asmx (web service version 1.52)<BR>http://www.mydomain.com/WSNEWS/201/news.asmx (web service version 2.01)<BR><BR><BR>Has anyone done anything like that before?<BR>What are your thoughts?<BR>Is my approach any good?<BR>