>When the request comes into the Handler (i'm using the axis stable >version 1.1), when i try to do an Long length = >message.getContentLength(), my Tomcat3 server prints out a nice >OutOfMemoryException, so i can't discard the long messages.
Do you know about the -Xmx flag to the JVM to increase the amount of memory it is allowed to access? This is not specific to Tomcat or Axis, but more a general Java thing.