Rajesh discovers how to get good information out of a SOAP error: trust the Smalltalk Debugger:

It's enough to simply raise the exception in the method that implements the web service API. ActionWebService takes care of converting this exception into a SOAP fault message.

Five lines of code in the VisualWorks workspace was all it took:

wsdlClient := WsdlClient new loadFrom: 'http://localhost:3000/hello/service.wsdl' asURI.
soapRequest := SoapRequest new.
soapRequest port: wsdlClient config anyPort.
soapRequest smalltalkEntity: (Message selector: #Hello ).
soapResponse := soapRequest value.

Executing this snippet produced a Smalltalk exception; step into the debugger, inspect the transportEntity object, and see the SOAP fault message in all its glory.

Having a good debugger and a workspace is an amazing productivity boost.

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