title: AxisFault: What does Server.userException mean?
body: <p>What does the following AxisFault mean?</p>
  
  <p>Does it mean that:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>The request that is issued and received by the server and the server throws an (uncaught) exception, and therefore the exception is returned back to the client.</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>or</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>My web app fails to create the SOAP request (so the request is not even sent from the client app)</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>NB. I'm new to web services</p>
  
  <pre><code>AxisFault
   faultCode: {http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/}Server.userException
   faultSubcode:
   faultString: org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: An invalid XML character (Unicode: 0x1c) was found in the element content of the document.
   faultActor:
   faultNode:
   faultDetail:
          {http://xml.apache.org/axis/}stackTrace:org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: An invalid XML character (Unicode: 0x1c) was found in the element content of the document.
          at org.apache.xerces.util.ErrorHandlerWrapper.createSAXParseException(Unknown Source)
          at org.apache.xerces.util.ErrorHandlerWrapper.fatalError(Unknown Source)
          at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLErrorReporter.reportError(Unknown Source)
          at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLErrorReporter.reportError(Unknown Source)
          at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLScanner.reportFatalError(Unknown Source)
          at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl$FragmentContentDispatcher.dispatch(Unknown Source)
          at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.scanDocument(Unknown Source)
          at org.apache.xerces.parsers.XML11Configuration.parse(Unknown Source)
          at org.apache.xerces.parsers.XML11Configuration.parse(Unknown Source)
          at org.apache.xerces.parsers.XMLParser.parse(Unknown Source)
          at org.apache.xerces.parsers.AbstractSAXParser.parse(Unknown Source)
          at org.apache.xerces.jaxp.SAXParserImpl$JAXPSAXParser.parse(Unknown Source)
          at org.apache.xerces.jaxp.SAXParserImpl.parse(Unknown Source)
          at org.apache.axis.encoding.DeserializationContext.parse(DeserializationContext.java:227)
          at org.apache.axis.SOAPPart.getAsSOAPEnvelope(SOAPPart.java:696)
          at org.apache.axis.Message.getSOAPEnvelope(Message.java:435)
  </code></pre>