Kristian, Looking at the source for the Axis 1.x URI class, it seem there are two facts here
1. We borrowed this code from the Xerces 2 source tree 2. It jumps through a lot of hoops to make sure the right characters are in the URI, and the comment header in the file references the following RFCs: RFC 2396 - http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2396.txt?number=2396 RFC 2732 - http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2732.txt?number=2732 Hope that helps. Tom Jordahl From: Kristian Barek [mailto:bar...@gmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2009 1:16 PM To: axis-dev@ws.apache.org Subject: anyURI MalformedURIException with UTF-8 characters - bug or feature? Is Apache Axis correct in disallowing international (UTF-8) characters in anyURI tags when processing responses to web services requests? I've looked at the specification at http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-2/#anyURI , and as far as I can see, anyURIs can contain any character, so long as the resulting of URL encoring the URL is valid. This simple test case illustrates the problem: class Test { public static void main(String[] args) { try { org.apache.axis.types.URI uri = new org.apache.axis.types.URI("http://www.utdanningsdirektoratet.no/templates/udir/TM_Læreplan.aspx?id=2100&laereplanid=707207<http://www.utdanningsdirektoratet.no/templates/udir/TM_L%C3%A6replan.aspx?id=2100&laereplanid=707207>"); } catch(Exception e) { System.out.println(e); } } } If anyone can provide me with any background / reasons on why Axis indeed is correct in invalidating this URI, I would be very grateful. (If I can point to which standards our web services vendor is breaking, then I have a much better case to get them to stop putting norwegian characters in their anyURIs. :) Best regards, Kristian Barek