I have developed a Web Service using JAX-WS (v2.1.3 - Sun JDK 1.6.0_05) deployed on WebLogic 10.3 that works just fine when I use a Java client or SoapUI or other Web Services testing tools. I need to consume this service using 2005 Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services and I get the following error

Couldn't create SOAP message due to exception: XML reader error: unexpected character content

SEVERE: Couldn't create SOAP message due to exception: XML reader error: unexpected character content: "?"
com.sun.xml.ws.protocol.soap.MessageCreationException: Couldn't create SOAP message due to exception: XML reader error: unexpected character content: "?"
at com.sun.xml.ws.encoding.SOAPBindingCodec.decode(SOAPBindingCodec.java:292)
at com.sun.xml.ws.transport.http.HttpAdapter.decodePacket(HttpAdapter.java:276)
at com.sun.xml.ws.transport.http.HttpAdapter.access$500(HttpAdapter.java:93)
at com.sun.xml.ws.transport.http.HttpAdapter$HttpToolkit.handle(HttpAdapter.java:432)
at com.sun.xml.ws.transport.http.HttpAdapter.handle(HttpAdapter.java:244)
at com.sun.xml.ws.transport.http.servlet.ServletAdapter.handle(ServletAdapter.java:134)
at com.sun.xml.ws.transport.http.servlet.WSServletDelegate.doGet(WSServletDelegate.java:129)
at com.sun.xml.ws.transport.http.servlet.WSServletDelegate.doPost(WSServletDelegate.java:160)
at com.sun.xml.ws.transport.http.servlet.WSServlet.doPost(WSServlet.java:75)
at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:727)
at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:820)
at weblogic.servlet.internal.StubSecurityHelper$ServletServiceAction.run(StubSecurityHelper.java:227)
at weblogic.servlet.internal.StubSecurityHelper.invokeServlet(StubSecurityHelper.java:125)
at weblogic.servlet.internal.ServletStubImpl.execute(ServletStubImpl.java:292)
at weblogic.servlet.internal.ServletStubImpl.execute(ServletStubImpl.java:175)
at weblogic.servlet.internal.WebAppServletContext$ServletInvocationAction.run(WebAppServletContext.java:3498)
at weblogic.security.acl.internal.AuthenticatedSubject.doAs(AuthenticatedSubject.java:321)
at weblogic.security.service.SecurityManager.runAs(Unknown Source)
at weblogic.servlet.internal.WebAppServletContext.securedExecute(WebAppServletContext.java:2180)
at weblogic.servlet.internal.WebAppServletContext.execute(WebAppServletContext.java:2086)
at weblogic.servlet.internal.ServletRequestImpl.run(ServletRequestImpl.java:1406)
at weblogic.work.ExecuteThread.execute(ExecuteThread.java:201)
at weblogic.work.ExecuteThread.run(ExecuteThread.java:173)
Caused by: com.sun.xml.ws.streaming.XMLStreamReaderException: XML reader error: unexpected character content: "?"
at com.sun.xml.ws.streaming.XMLStreamReaderUtil.nextElementContent(XMLStreamReaderUtil.java:102)
at com.sun.xml.ws.encoding.StreamSOAPCodec.decode(StreamSOAPCodec.java:174)
at com.sun.xml.ws.encoding.StreamSOAPCodec.decode(StreamSOAPCodec.java:296)
at com.sun.xml.ws.encoding.StreamSOAPCodec.decode(StreamSOAPCodec.java:128)
at com.sun.xml.ws.encoding.SOAPBindingCodec.decode(SOAPBindingCodec.java:287)
... 22 more

If I use a HTTP proxy to sniff out what SSRS is sending to JAX-WS, I see EF BB BF as the beginning of the post body and JAX-WS doesn't like that. If I remove the special characters and resubmit the request using Fiddler, then the web-service invocation works.

Why does JAX-WS blow up with the standard UTF-8 BOM? Is there a workaround to get past this issue? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

--Vinny