See the SOAP 1.2 spec at http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-soap12-20010709.
As stated towards the end of Section 5.1:

  "9. A NULL value or a default value MAY be represented by omission 
  of the accessor element. A NULL value MAY also be indicated by 
  an accessor element containing the attribute xsi:null with value 
  '1' or possibly other application-dependent attributes and values."

So the treatment of 'null' is left up to the implementation,
since "MAY" indicates that these are only suggestions.
I believe that Apache SOAP 2.2 takes the 'xsi:null' approach.

-Chris

John Mani wrote:
> 
> Java APIs that return Java objects sometimes return null to signify certain
> conditions (like lack of data)
> Does SOAP allow for such scenarios - i.e., a null representation of an
> object ?
> 
> If so, does Apache SOAP allow this ?
> 
> thanx
> -john

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