By saying it "worked all right", I think you mean it did something which
matched your guess as to what the OP wanted. In general though I don't think
that the effect of calling the Java toString() method on a Saxon node is
well-defined or predictable.

Earlier, I have successfully invoked a SOAP service using this method.
The XSLT 2.0 stylesheet made the SOAP calls, using Saxon 8.0.

<xsl:variable name="SoapEnvelope">
  <env:Envelope ...

  </env:Envelope>
</xsl:variable>

I don't remember exactly, but I think I used write(java.lang.String
str) method of java.io.OutputStreamWriter class (from within the XSLT
stylesheet) to make the SOAP calls.

Regards,
Mukul

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/