Two problems, I feel kinda stupid for missing them... :-( 1. My get methods weren't really get methods. I had not prepended get on to my variable name, so instead of getPartNumber() I had partNumber().
2. I had not registered my type mappings using registerTypeMapping() in the SerializationTester object: st.registerTypeMapping(DialogCompany.class, new QName("http://aces.apple.com/DialogSOAP", "Company"), org.apache.axis.encodin g.ser.BeanSerializerFactory.class, org.apache.axis.encoding.ser.BeanDeserializerFactory.class); So the big problem was that I needed to actually create a JavaBean. It seems like the term "bean" is thrown about fairly loosely. Most of the reading I had done on it seemed to indicate that it was a GUI widget, but I now think that generically, a bean is anything that has getter and setter methods that can be reused. (And maybe implements serializable.). Overall, kinda confusing for someone new to bean programming. Thanks, Adhamh