VB Web service with arrays as variant type - access from java

Question

Hi, I have a VB service as an activex.dll running on IIS. My first experience with VB.
The input type is variant, as VB will only handle arrays of that type. All works well with
a VB client. It takes 2 arrays in and returns an array. The WSDL file using a complex
type of
<complexType name='ArrayOfanyType'>
     <complexContent>
          <restriction base='SOAP-ENC:Array'>
               <attribute ref='SOAP-ENC:arrayType' wsdl:arrayType='anyType[]'/>
          </restriction>
     </complexContent>
</complexType>
I take this WSDL file to the client side, change the type to
<complexType name='ArrayOfinteger'>
     <complexContent>
          <restriction base='SOAP-ENC:Array'>
               <attribute ref='SOAP-ENC:arrayType' wsdl:arrayType='integer[]'/>
          </restriction>
     </complexContent>
</complexType>
and then generate the Java proxy using jdeveloper 9031. All is good and I call the service
and get a response, which in turn gives me a result. the result.getvalue fails with a caste
exception, [LObject[] to Integer[]. The return value is there, but it's type is Object, which I can
see by inspecting response in the debugger. I am getting
pretty sure it is not a Java Object, but a dom or sax Object. The DOM DocumentBuilder
works for String to get the values, but not for this Object type. Does anyone know how to
parse out an Object Type with DOM or SAX?

Answer 1

A java type "Object" is parent class of all java instances - to parse it with DOM or SAX requires you to cast it to the required object type by that parser api - eg "Document" - check out the DOM and SAX api docuemntation.