Premature EOF encountered with Document as a return type

Question

I have created a web service that returns a Document object. I have successfully deployed the web service to my local OC4J standalone (9.0.3), and tested it within JDeveloper with a stub. The same web service is deployed to our test server running 9iAS 9.0.2, with OC4J 9.0.2. When I change my stub to point to the test server, I get the following error rather than the Document returned:
[SOAPException: faultCode=SOAP-ENV:IOException; msg=Premature EOF encountered; targetException=java.io.EOFException: Premature EOF encountered]
Thinking this was a OC4J version issue, I installed 9.0.3 standalone on the same machine. I am able to navigate to the web services page for my web service successfully, invoke the web service, and see the correct Document embedded within the SOAP response. I was unable to do this on the 9.0.2 OC4J instance. Unfortunately, I get the same error when running the stub from JDeveloper and pointing to the 9.0.3 web service.
In an probably unrelated note, I am trying to use the web services portlet, pointing to my stub to call my web service. With this, I get the following error:
ERROR: Failed to handle HTTP Request
oracle.xml.parser.v2.XMLDOMException: Object not supported in current implementation.
     at oracle.xml.parser.v2.XMLDocument.importNode(XMLDocument.java:1303)
     at oracle.portal.provider.v2.webservice.RPCWebServiceRenderer.expandResult(Unknown Source)
     at oracle.portal.provider.v2.webservice.RPCWebServiceRenderer.invokeService(Unknown Source)
     at oracle.portal.provider.v2.webservice.WebServiceRenderer.renderBody(Unknown Source)
     at oracle.portal.provider.v2.render.RenderManager.render(Unknown Source)
     at oracle.portal.provider.v2.DefaultPortletInstance.render(Unknown Source)
     at oracle.webdb.provider.v2.adapter.soapV1.ProviderAdapter.showPortlet(Unknown Source)
     at oracle.webdb.provider.v2.adapter.soapV1.ProviderAdapter.handleHttp(Unknown Source)
     at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Native Method)
     at oracle.webdb.provider.v2.adapter.SOAPServlet.doHTTPCall(Unknown Source)
     at oracle.webdb.provider.v2.adapter.SOAPServlet.service(Unknown Source)
     at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:336)
Thinking this is an xmlparser version issue, not sure which parser is taking precendence, the OC4J_Portal parser, my application parser, or the ORACLE_HOME parser.
I have thrashed on these issues for a little while, and hopefully I have missed something obvious here. Anything jump out at anyone?
Thanks!

Answer 1

Mike,
Thanks for the response. The reason I am inclined to use Document as a return type is for reuse. Our system is based on the creation of Document representations of content to be displayed, and we use framework code to transform given an xsl. I am trying to establish a pattern for publishing web services right from our existing processes that return the Document. I did play with Element, but would rather not go that way.
I think my web service is working fine now, actually. (Why it can't be tested from JDev, I'm not sure. I will try the server side proxy as you suggest). It is returning my xml content within the <return> of the response. The problem is transforming the result with an xsl. I have tried the web services portlet, which won't work for me because of my return type, and I'm now trying the OmniPortlet, which seems to be coming tantalizingly close to working ;). Not sure if you have used the OmniPortlet or not, but running it, I can see the return of the web service with my xml, which looks good, but then I get this error:
3/12/03 8:55 AM omniPortlet: [id=(null), instance=3915_OMNIPORTLET_49587206] XMLData.next => o
racle.webdb.reformlet.ReformletException: Error occured while fetching XML data.
Also, I've had problems getting the OmniPortlet to recognize my xsl filter for the xml being returned.
Anyone have any success using OmniPortlet consuming a web service that returns xml to be transformed with an xsl filter?
Thanks,
Jason