I hadn't had a chance to follow this topic. Hopefully my input will still be useful before Ronald goes to Aruba :) In general you should defer as much Java-XML binding to the web services stack as you can. Custom parsing should be avoided as it is hard to optimize. Something like: <command name="[xsd:string]" [other attibutes optional]> | [any mixed content] | </command> maps, per JAX-RPC rules, to class Command { | String name; | SOAPElement _any; | } The SOAP stack parses the [any mixed content] to produce the SOAPElement. Then the application processes the SOAPElement to produce Java objects. Result: two separate binding steps! Plus, every command is a separate contract and should have its own document. Something like Ronald's proposal: <startProcess> | <processDefinition .../> | <variables ...> | </startProcess> is a lot better. What is unclear to me is how to introduce new commands. Is each of them a new operation in the WSDL port type? View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=3968149#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...