HandlerChainSortInterceptor.handleMessage(Message) sorts and sets JAX-WS handlers every time it handles a SOAP message:

   public void handleMessage(Message message) throws Fault
   {
      if (binding != null) {
         @SuppressWarnings("rawtypes")
         List<Handler> list = binding.getHandlerChain();
         if (list != null && !list.isEmpty()) {
            Collections.sort(list, comparator);
            binding.setHandlerChain(list);
         }
      }
   }

However, inside the org.apache.cxf.jaxws.binding.AbstractBindingImpl and org.apache.cxf.jaxws.support.JaxWsEndpointImpl implementations the handler chain is not reset every time but piled up with interceptors, which leads to subtle but indefinite memory leak in JBoss WS CXF client.

Furthermore, org.apache.cxf.jaxws.support.JaxWsEndpointImpl holds the interceptors as a kind of java.util.concurrent.CopyOnWriteArrayList. So modifying the growing list of interceptors per each message should cause a growing performance drawback, which is also not a good implementation.