ok, so I think I'm going in the right direction now....
in my handler class:
apparently this is where if gets the header from your soap request, however header.toString() returns null....
(by the way, I added writeOut(test4), it just creates a file so I can see where the program is getting to)
SO...header is null, which as I read the tutorial site posted I have to register each header and assign it to a qname.
(see "Adding a SOAP Header Block To a Handler" in
http://docs.sun.com/source/817-2324/CreatingHandlers.html#42596)
any ideas how to do this? the editor I use is netbeans 6.8 so slightly different then the one in the tutorial...
starting to get there....Lavanya