message style == document/literal ? (and valid signature ?)

[tony k]

Hi All, I'm relatively new to web services and axis, so forgive me if this is old hat, but i have a few questions that i was hoping the more learned may be able to answer. (1) if i wanted to use document/literal interaction for a web services would this be the equivalent of what axis refers to as "message" style? (2) the axis documentation provides 4 possible signatures for message style interaction: public Element [] method(Element [] bodies); public SOAPBodyElement [] method (SOAPBodyElement [] bodies); public Document method(Document body); public void method(SOAPEnvelope req, SOAPEnvelope resp); I was expecting to see something like: public String method(String request); and am a bit perplexed as to why: (a) if i already have an XML string, it seems like i'm going to take a performance hit converting to DOM object on client and then back on server side (b)  what if i want to use SAX or dom4j to parse XML on server side, i'm stuck with some kind of another hit for conversion Can someone help me to understand and/or offer up some best practices? Any input appreciated, Thanks, Tony.