Question

I ran into a strange problem using a C# webservice client to call a ASP.NET 2.0 webservice.
The service is a simple product search and returns an array of products matching a search term – see the relevant part of the WSDL file below.
My C# client is simply generated by adding a web reference in VS2010 (non-WCF) and for comparison I’m using an Axis 1.4 Java client.
Using the same search paramaters in both the C# and the Java client the call returns 50 products but in the C# client the result array has length 1 while the Java client shows up the correct 50 elements.

I am looking for suggestions how to locate the problem – I’ve tried the following:

• Compare the XML returned by the webservice using a TCP/IP monitor: The XML looks identical C# vs. Java and contains the 50 products
• Compare HTTP parameters using netcat: C# defaults to HTTP 1.1 while Axis 1.4 uses HTTP 1.0, but changing the C# client to use HTTP 1.0 as well does no change anything
• Try SOAP 1.2 instead of SOAP 1.1: No effect
• Try HttpGetProtocol, HttpPostProtocol instead of Soap

Any suggestions are highly appreciated.

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EDIT: Full WSDL and generated code (Reference.cs) can be found here:
http://timmay.dk/Reference.txt
http://timmay.dk/Wsdl.txt

Simplified WSDL part:

      <s:element name="Search">
    <s:complexType>
      <s:sequence>
        <s:element minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="1" name="SearchTerm" type="s:string" />
        <s:element minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="1" name="StartFrom" type="s:string" />
        <s:element minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="1" name="NumberToBeReturned" type="s:string" />
      </s:sequence>
    </s:complexType>
  </s:element>
  <s:element name="SearchResponse">
    <s:complexType>
      <s:sequence>
        <s:element minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="1" name="SearchResult" type="tns:SearchResult" />
      </s:sequence>
    </s:complexType>
  </s:element>
  <s:complexType name="SearchResult">
    <s:sequence>
      <s:element minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="1" name="Products" type="tns:ArrayOfResponseProduct" />
    </s:sequence>
  </s:complexType>
  <s:complexType name="ArrayOfResponseProduct">
    <s:sequence>
      <s:element minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded" name="ResponseProduct" nillable="true" type="tns:ResponseProduct" />
    </s:sequence>
  </s:complexType>
  <s:complexType name="ResponseProduct">
    <s:sequence>
      <s:element minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="1" name="Fields" type="tns:ArrayOfResponseField" />
    </s:sequence>
    <s:attribute name="id" type="s:string" />
  </s:complexType>

Answer 1

It turned out that the culprit was the type of the return values – Response field

< s:complexType name="ResponseField">
    <s:sequence>
      <s:element minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="1" name="Name" type="s:string" />
      <s:element minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="1" name="Value">
        <s:complexType>
          <s:sequence>
            <s:element ref="s:schema" />
            <s:any />
          </s:sequence>
        </s:complexType>
      </s:element>
    </s:sequence>
  </s:complexType>

This was pr default converted to a System.Data.DataSet – changing this to a simple string solved the problem. It seems that the unmarshalling failed in this case.