How to return xmlType from Webservice generated with JDev and PL/SQL

Question

Hi,
I have generated an PL/SQL package that's returning a value as xmlType.
With JDeveloper I'm deploying this package as a webservice. When invoking the webservice from a webbrowser the result looks like:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<SOAP-ENV:Envelope
xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<SOAP-ENV:Body>
<ns1:testXmltypeResponse
xmlns:ns1="http://app/webservice.wsdl"
SOAP-ENV:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/">
<return xsi:type="xsd:string">
<ROWSET>
<ROW>
<TODAY>12-OCT-07</TODAY>
</ROW>
</ROWSET>
</return>
</ns1:testXmltypeResponse>
</SOAP-ENV:Body>
</SOAP-ENV:Envelope>
The problem is that the <return> tag contains 'xsi:type="xsd:string"'. And now the webservice response is not valid XML because the return value contains XML and not a string.
The solution would be, when invoking the webservice if the xsi:type would be missing from the result tag or would contains xsd:any. I tried editing the WSDL in JDeveloper and changing the type to xsd:any. After deploying and calling the WSDL from the webbrowser it contains this type. But when invoking the method from the webbrowser it still returns xsd:string as type.
How can I get rid of this type in the <return> or change it.
My JDeveloper version is 10.1.3.3.0 The Oracle database and 9iAS are 10.2.
Thanks in advance,
Thijs

Answer 1

What version are you on?
Works fine for me on my 11g:
SQL> create or replace procedure testxml (clob_out out clob)
  2  is
  3     l_clob   clob;
  4     l_ctx    dbms_xmlquery.ctxhandle;
  5  begin
  6     l_ctx := dbms_xmlquery.newcontext ('select * from dual');
  7     l_clob := dbms_xmlquery.getxml (l_ctx);
  8     clob_out := l_clob;
  9     dbms_xmlquery.closecontext (l_ctx);
10  end testxml;
11  /
Procedure created.
SQL>
SQL> variable vout clob;
SQL>
SQL> exec testxml (:vout)
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.
SQL>
SQL> print vout
VOUT
<?xml version = '1.0'?>
<ROWSET>
   <ROW num="1">
      <DUMMY>X</DUMMY>
   </ROW>
</ROWSET>But definitely you can optimize your proc a bit: Try
create or replace procedure testxml (clob_out in out nocopy clob)
is
   l_ctx    dbms_xmlquery.ctxhandle;
begin
   l_ctx := dbms_xmlquery.newcontext ('select * from dual');
   clob_out := dbms_xmlquery.getxml (l_ctx);
   dbms_xmlquery.closecontext (l_ctx);
end testxml;
/