Tracing XML request/responses with JAX-WS

Before starting tomcat, set JAVA_OPTS as below in Linux envs. Then start Tomcat. You will see the request and response in the catalina.out file.

export JAVA_OPTS="$JAVA_OPTS -Dcom.sun.xml.ws.transport.http.client.HttpTransportPipe.dump=true"

Following options enable logging of all communication to the console (technically, you only need one of these, but that depends on the libraries you use, so setting all four is safer option). You can set it in the code like in example, or as command line parameter using -D or as environment variable as Upendra wrote.

System.setProperty("com.sun.xml.ws.transport.http.client.HttpTransportPipe.dump", "true");
System.setProperty("com.sun.xml.internal.ws.transport.http.client.HttpTransportPipe.dump", "true");
System.setProperty("com.sun.xml.ws.transport.http.HttpAdapter.dump", "true");
System.setProperty("com.sun.xml.internal.ws.transport.http.HttpAdapter.dump", "true");
System.setProperty("com.sun.xml.internal.ws.transport.http.HttpAdapter.dumpTreshold", "999999");

See question Tracing XML request/responses with JAX-WS when error occurs for details.

Here is the solution in raw code (put together thanks to stjohnroe and Shamik):

Endpoint ep = Endpoint.create(new WebserviceImpl());
List<Handler> handlerChain = ep.getBinding().getHandlerChain();
handlerChain.add(new SOAPLoggingHandler());
ep.getBinding().setHandlerChain(handlerChain);
ep.publish(publishURL);

Where SOAPLoggingHandler is (ripped from linked examples):

package com.myfirm.util.logging.ws;

import java.io.PrintStream;
import java.util.Map;
import java.util.Set;

import javax.xml.namespace.QName;
import javax.xml.soap.SOAPMessage;
import javax.xml.ws.handler.MessageContext;
import javax.xml.ws.handler.soap.SOAPHandler;
import javax.xml.ws.handler.soap.SOAPMessageContext;

/*
 * This simple SOAPHandler will output the contents of incoming
 * and outgoing messages.
 */
public class SOAPLoggingHandler implements SOAPHandler<SOAPMessageContext> {

    // change this to redirect output if desired
    private static PrintStream out = System.out;

    public Set<QName> getHeaders() {
        return null;
    }

    public boolean handleMessage(SOAPMessageContext smc) {
        logToSystemOut(smc);
        return true;
    }

    public boolean handleFault(SOAPMessageContext smc) {
        logToSystemOut(smc);
        return true;
    }

    // nothing to clean up
    public void close(MessageContext messageContext) {
    }

    /*
     * Check the MESSAGE_OUTBOUND_PROPERTY in the context
     * to see if this is an outgoing or incoming message.
     * Write a brief message to the print stream and
     * output the message. The writeTo() method can throw
     * SOAPException or IOException
     */
    private void logToSystemOut(SOAPMessageContext smc) {
        Boolean outboundProperty = (Boolean)
            smc.get (MessageContext.MESSAGE_OUTBOUND_PROPERTY);

        if (outboundProperty.booleanValue()) {
            out.println("\nOutbound message:");
        } else {
            out.println("\nInbound message:");
        }

        SOAPMessage message = smc.getMessage();
        try {
            message.writeTo(out);
            out.println("");   // just to add a newline
        } catch (Exception e) {
            out.println("Exception in handler: " + e);
        }
    }
}