Is WSDL sort order relevant?

Question

I'm refactoring an existing C# .NET Web Service that is consumed by existing Delphi 2006 (non-.NET) clients. I don't want to rebuild/redeploy the clients. My goal is to keep the WSDL identical so that the proxy classes won't change.

I used a tool (Regionerate) to region and sort the methods/properties based on our current standards. This changed the tag ordering in the WSDL.

I can use an XML diff tool to compare the files and ignore ordering, but I'm not sure if this will affect the clients. Is order of web methods or (to-be-proxy) class properties relevant?

Answer 1

The order should be totally irrelevant, for the methods in the WSDL as well as for the properties in the classes.

The only way I can imagine how this would affect the clients would be if the clients didn't use standard libraries to consume the service, but did it by ways of some custom coded weirdness - and even then the implementer would have had to go some extra miles to introduce a dependency on the order ;)