It does seem backwards doesn't it! :)  Basically the web service is
wrapping a legacy component (vb component) that expects a string that
contains xml.  Our development is phased in that Phase One is putting a
web service front end to this legacy code.  Phase Two will rewrite the
legacy component in a java.  We don't want to change the web service
interface once its published initially and we want a richer interface
than just asking for a string.  So for the initial phase we want to
have the interface utilize java classes for the data coming in.  At
first we'll turn around and extract the data into an string of xml and
pass it on to the legacy component.   In the later phase we'll pass the
java objects.  I hope this make sense?  In a perfect world this
wouldn't occur, but...   So my issue is finding out what is the easiest
way to get an xml representation of the data (preferably in the format
it was sent) once inside the logic of the webservice.  I'm working with
both weblogic and axis to prototype this out and both handle the
population of the incoming xml into the java classes.   I'm hoping to
find a way to do the reverse of this, if such an animal exists.  I'm
also investigating options such as Castor to take the java classes and
serialize them to xml, although this option appears to require a
mapping step to get the data in the format that the legacy component
requires.  Any help/suggestions would be appreciated.