If anyone is interested I have managed to receive a java.lang.util.HashMap with .NET returned by an AXIS web service. During the process of trying to work that out I also found out that the root of the problem was a namespace differrency: .NET interpreted the namespaces of the WSDL false and addtitionally AXIS did not itself conform to the (auto generated - with ?wsdl) WSDL.
I intentionally did not include any more details because I don't know if there is any interest in this. Paul .
