General peformance question

[Jeffrey J Gaynor/jqhome <jj...@jqhome.net>]

Hi,

I am running an AXIS service now under Java (both clients and server). 
There has been a request made for allowing largish strings to be sent as 
arguments, which will be parsed on the server. I would like to know the 
following, as it relates to people's experience:

* Attachments are probably the way to go. Is there a specific size after 
which one should use attachments? E.g. If our text objects are maybe a 
couple hundred k, do I need to learn about attachments?

* Is there a largest size for attachments, after which there are 
performance issues? So if we wanted to send a 15 mb file, would this simply 
crawl/crash?

* For arbitrary strings, is it possible for the xml to get munged, so that 
the receiving end gets gibberish (e.g., imporperly escaped international 
characters)?

I am looking at these with an eye towards how to implement this best and 
see what caveats go along with it. If someone has some timings for 
transfers, that would be super. As always, any advice is gratefully 
received!

Cheers,

Jeff