How can I define an associative array in a SOAP wsdl file? This is how I define an array element type so far:
WSDL cannot describe the associative nature of an associative array. The best you could do would be to define an array of name/value.
Can you define a PHP service with an operation that returns an associative array, then see what WSDL that produces? You could then follow the same pattern in your own, hand-written WSDLs.