Missing Parts and Null Holders

[Ben Hawes <be...@pa.press.net>]

We've run into a problem with the way AXIS handles missing parts in messages.
Given the message declared as:

<message name="notifyAddNodeRequest">
 <part name="nodeInfo" type="gv:Node"/>
 <part name="alienKeys" type="gv:MapStringString"/>
</message>

If the "alienKeys" part isn't present (which often it won't be), then AXIS, instead of passing an empty MapStringStringHolder through to the message handlers, passes null.

This causes problems, as the response:

<message name="notifyAddNodeResponse">
 <part name="alienKeys" type="gv:MapStringString"/>
</message>

Uses the same holder to get the returned alienKeys. If this holder is null, there is no way of passing the returned values back.

Is there a way round this (short of forcing the incoming messages to have an empty alienKeys part)? Or is the behaviour likely to be fixed at any point?

Thanks,
B