SOAP payload size

Question

I had a general question about the construction of a SOAP message and if my requirement can be met. I want to expose a web service to return an 'Item' (custom data type) similar to the generated getByKey() service. Now the problem is that the Item type has over 350 attributes and for most items these attributes are going to be null. I noticed that the generated web service constructs the message as follows:
For every attribute that does not have a value, the element is still created with 'nil=true'. Is it possible to avoid this extra serialization? I was wondering if this overhead can be avoided, if we are returning lets say 10 000 items. I am guessing if the xsd does not require this attribute to be present then can we just not have it in the actual SOAP message. Is there a way to customize the constructed SOAP message? It looks like all the methods of the ServiceImpl class are private.
Are there other ways to avoid this penalty?
Any help appreciated.
Thanks!
-darpan

Answer 1

Is your schema def correct? It should be something like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1252" ?>
<xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
xmlns="http://www.sample.org" targetNamespace="http://www.sample.org"
elementFormDefault="qualified">
<xs:element name="customer" type="customerRoleDTO"/>
<xs:complexType name="roleDTO">
<xs:sequence>
<xs:element name="roleId" type="xs:string" minOccurs="0"/>
<xs:element name="description" type="xs:string" minOccurs="0"/>
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
<xs:complexType name="customerRoleDTO">
<xs:complexContent>
<xs:extension base="roleDTO">
<xs:sequence>
<xs:element name="creditStatus" type="xs:string" minOccurs="0"/>
</xs:sequence>
</xs:extension>
</xs:complexContent>
</xs:complexType>
</xs:schema>