References as .NET use (function call parameters outside of the actual function call) seem not to be handled at all in the ext/soap extension. So maybe it is not a bug but rather "not implemented". The call below is an example message sent from .NET with references.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
	xmlns:soapenc="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"
	xmlns:tns="http://spock/kunta/kunta"
	xmlns:types="http://spock/kunta/kunta/encodedTypes"
	xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
	xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">

<soap:Body soap:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/">
	<q1:bassCall xmlns:q1="http://spock/bass/types/kunta">
		<system xsi:type="xsd:string">XXX</system>
		<function xsi:type="xsd:string">TASKTEST</function>
		<parameter href="#id1" />
	</q1:bassCall>
	
	<soapenc:Array id="id1" soapenc:arrayType="tns:Item[1]">
		<Item href="#id2" />
	</soapenc:Array>
	
	<tns:Item id="id2" xsi:type="tns:Item">
		<key xsi:type="xsd:string">ABCabc123</key>
		<val xsi:type="xsd:string">123456</val>
	</tns:Item>
	
</soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

This above fail because of the following lines in ext/soap/soap.c, starting at 2764. The code explicitly does not allow references outside of the function.

	func = NULL;
	trav = body->children;
	while (trav != NULL) {
		if (trav->type == XML_ELEMENT_NODE) {
			if (func != NULL) {
				soap_server_fault("Client", "looks like we got \"Body\" with several functions call", NULL, NULL, NULL TSRMLS_CC);
			}
			func = trav;
		}
		trav = trav->next;
	}

Regards,
Danne Lundqvist

Fixed in CVS HEAD and PHP_5_0.