WebService returning XmlNode[]

Greetings,

I am new to webMethods. I have spent the last month or so scouring the endless documentation and trying to get my head around this model.

One of the requirements for the project that I am working on is to provide a webService that takes and XmlDocument as the input parameter and returns an XmlDocument.

As a simple proof of concept I decided to create a simple flow that took as an input a string (xmlIn) and returned a string as an output (xmlOut). In this POC the outPut should be exactly what was passed in, obviously this would not be the case in reality. When I call this webService and pass in any string like “The cat in the Hat.” everything works fine. However, if I pass a simple xml document as a string the calling application barfs (.Net) - can provide the exact error message if it would be helpful, but I think at this point that is a side issue.

The reason I think it is a side issue is that if I change the output parameter from a string to an object the call from the client succeeds. Only what is returned is a XmlNode array with a length of 1.

I also created a java client using NetBeans to see what, if any differences are related to .net vs java in calling webMethods web services. Unfortunately, I haven’t hit on the magic combination in the ACL list and get an access denied when the webservice attempts to access the wsdl when invoking the webservice.

I guess this is a really long winded way of asking

  1. Why would the following string need to be returned as an object and not a string?

string xyz = “<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?><Message source=‘String’” +
“target=‘String’ type=‘CWCreateOrder’ >”;

  1. What should the ACL to be for calling a webservice in NetBeans. To get it to work in .Net I needed to change the ExecuteACL to Annonymous.

Any insights would be greatly appreciated,

l

I realized after posting this that I put it in the wrong forum. I apologize for that and will repost it in the SOA