Need direction on best way to call web service and handle responses in Orchestration

Hi, don’t get to use BizTalk much and would like some suggestions on the best way to handle an interface I am developing in BizTalk.

I have to call a web service which it’s request and response are strings. Therefore I will be receving an XML doc. Assigning the OuterXML to the web request string and then receive a response.

When I convert to string in an Assign shape the special characters eg. & are saved as such. Whereas I need it saved as &

Question 1:  Is there something in BizTalk that does this without having to write a function to convert.

When receiving the response I could receive two different schemas each with it’s own XSD.

Question 2: As it’s a string what would be the best way to assign the correct schema. Can I use Multipart message or am I going to the wrong track. Even though the response is a string can I set the message to the mulitpart?

Thank you and best regards,

Rob