If Soap:lite is incompatible with document/literal, are there
alternatives out there which would allow to implement document/literal
SOAP service in Pearl? I've asked the same question in Soap:Lite yahoo
group and total silence was my answer.

I'd love to hear if I am wrong about either of the above!

The good news is that the following process works beautifully:

* Create a SOAP::Lite service in the usual way.

* If you receive or send complex data structures,
        Use Perl objects
        Return references to arrays instead of arrays
        Do not use perl data structures like HoH
        Do not use SOAP::Data to construct params or return values.

* Mark up your Perl objects following the instructions
   in the POD::WSDL documentation

* Use POD::WSDL to create WSDL for the service

* Use that WSDL to create stubs in technologies that
   normally only like Doc/Literal
   e.g. C# .NET
   I downloaded mono and used it's wsdl.exe to create a
   C# stub from the WSDL created by POD::WSDL

* Use those stubs in the normal way.
   I could write normal C# code, constructing C# objects and passing
   them as params to Perl SOAP::Lite services via methods of a stub
   service object. Perl objects emerge as C# objects and vice-versa.

* The receiving Perl service receives full Perl objects
   and you can invoke instance methods using those
   objects!

I have done this with moderately complex parameters such as an array of
objects where each object contains various fields and an array of
another type of object.

Note that the C# programmer does not have to even know about the
distinction between RPC/Encoded and Doc/Literal. Everything just works.

I haven't tried this with Perl's inside-out objects, just the original
traditional hash based objects. The C# classes created in the stub for
the parameter and return objects obviously lack methods and accessors,
you just refer to public variables (fields) using object.field notation

Perl service

    my @things;
    my $thing = new Thing(1,99.9,"aha");
    $thing->addWhatsit("foo", 23.3); # inner array of Whatsit objects
    $thing->addWhatist("bar", 23.3);
    push @things $thing;
    $thing = new Thing(2,34.2,"oho");
    return \@things;

C# client

    // stub gen from WSDL defines ThingService, Thing and Whatsit.
    ThingService service = new ThingService();
    Thing[] things = service.method(params);
    for (int i = 0; i < things.Length; i++) {
       Whatsit[] whatsits = things[i].whatsits;
       for (int j = 0; j < whatsits.Length; j++) {
          Console.WriteLine("This Things contains a Whatsit with name "
             + whatsits[j].name);
       }
    }