Is it possible to access the raw SOA / XML message in the JAX-RPC java client?

Here is some code that will give you the XML response payload. You can either get it directly from the AXIS Stub class, or from the handler that wrote it to MessageContext. Here's the one that reads it directly:

private String getSOAPResponseXML(Object clientstub) {
    String returnValue = null;
    org.apache.axis.client.Stub stub = (org.apache.axis.client.Stub)clientstub;
    Call call = stub._getCall();
    if (call != null) {
        MessageContext ctx = call.getMessageContext();
        // If I registered a handler
        // returnValue = (String) ctx.getProperty( ClientHandler.SOAP_RESPONSE );

        // or use:
        try {
            Message msg = call.getResponseMessage();
            ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
            // NOTE: If we never get a response (a request handler throws an uncaught error
            // this can cause a java.lang.NullPointerException
            msg.writeTo(baos);
            returnValue = baos.toString();
        } catch (java.io.IOException ex) {
            log.debug("Error in getSOAPResponseXML", ex);
        } catch (javax.xml.soap.SOAPException ex) {
            log.debug("Error in getSOAPResponseXML", ex);
        }
    }
    return returnValue;
} // getSOAPResponseXML

If you need a handler, just let me know.