The best way to send a response for a webservice is to send it as XML node or a string.
Response should be descriptive of what the request wanted and what happened to the request.
Most of the cases, a success result will be sent as OK or success.
Failure codecs are the first ones to be decided while creating a web service.
Consider what are the failure scenarious and codecs to be written for each type of error which should be understandable by both the parties.
While establishing a connection between any service requester and the service that is being provided, decide upon two things before starting to code:
1. What will be the request format
2. What will be the response format
Once these two are decided and documented, further parsing and sending of each data will have to be done by both the parties.
Remember, its not called a service unless it responds.
