Handler order can change after a reboot, which causes problems when one handler depends on the action of another.

• Description of the problem
  The flow is basically the following:
  1) the container model is parsed; it can include jaxws configs, which are composed
  of jaxws handler chains, which in turn has one or multiple jaxws handlers
  2) we have add operations for each jaxws handler and jaxws handler
  chain. Each of them starts a service, which builds up the corresponding
  metadata to be later used by jbossws; proper dependencies are set
  between those services, so that for instance the service for a handler
  chain waits for all its handlers' services.
  3) when the service for the handler chain runs, it gets the info from
  the handler services and them in the chain metadata. This is where I get
  unpredictable ordering, as the handler services are run in parallel

• Solution
  The idea is that we need to derive the handlers' order from the add operation steps, which are executed in the same order they're created in the parser.

Brian also suggests to use the OperationContext.attach(...) API to pass data between handler invocations within an overall operation execution. All ws subsystem ops during boot are executed as steps within an overall operation. The API works like the attachment stuff that's used a lot in DeploymentUnitProcessors.