Precompiled core service client versus generating your own proxy

Question

Since 2011sp1 Tridion comes with a precompiled core service client. Would there still be a reason to generate your own proxy by adding a service reference? Or is that older method officially deprecated now?

Answer 1

Let's take a look at advantages of compiled dll vs service reference:

• Core service is growing and it's quite a problem to generate service reference reference on slower network. The bigger core service will be the harder it will be to generate service reference (there are workarounds of course)
• Compiled dll is compiled using "correct" settings. There are some options you can set when generating service reference, like return types and types to be reused from other assemblies. By using compiled dll you are sure that you get everything right.
• You can get quite a mess with you app.config when updating service reference. I think updating dll and config is a bit easier.
• It's tricky to generate service reference when you have LDAP or SSO or HTTPs configured

Answer 2

The precompiled coreservice client is distributed by default to help implementers. As generating the own proxy is bit difficult (you might need to change some config in svcutil).

The precompiled coreservice client always uses the latest endpoint. Depending upon your situation you might need to generate your own proxy if you want to connect with the old endpoint always.

Otherwise you can use the precompiled client which will make sure you are connecting to the latest endpoint but that might break your client (you might need to fix something or recompile).