XML as SOAP response

[redhatlab]

Hi,

I wrote my own SOAP server using PHP and so far is working like a charm. My question is:

The response is in XML format, but the type I put in the WSDL for the response is string:

<part name='Result' type='xsd:string'/>

Should I use a better type like "any"?

Is it there any type for XML?

The reason for my question is that somethings for some soap clients read the XML as an string and change the < and > for their proper entities "&lt;" and "&gt;".

Thank you