What is data contract equivalence?

Two data contracts are said to be equivalent, if they satisfy the following conditions.
- Both the datacontracts must have same namespace
- Both the datacontracts must have same name
- The data member on data contract must have an equivalent data member on the other.
- The members in the datacontract must appear in the same order in both datacontracts.

Ex:

The following two data contracts are equal.

[DataContract]

public class Person

{

    [DataMember]

    public string Name;

    [DataMember]

    public string Email_ID;

}

[DataContract(Name = "Person")]

public class Employee

{

    [DataMember(Name = "Name")]

    private string EmpName;

    private string address;

    [DataMember(Name = "Email_ID")]

    private string EmpEmailId;

}