For the sake of isolating the error, can you reduce the column length to 2000 (the max size for a RAW column), repackage and redeploy the application? If downsizing causes the data to exceed the column length, locate the following entry in jbpm.cfg.xml and set it to a value greater than 0. Note that changing this setting has the side effect of enlarging small byte chunks (say, 100-200 bytes) so use it with care. <!-- see java.util.zip.Deflater for details on the compression level --> | <int name="jbpm.bpel.element.deflate.level" value="0" singleton="true" /> Anywhere you see length="4000" in the mapping documents, we mean "arbitrary length". For both jPDL and BPEL we'd have really liked to use BLOB/CLOB instead of VARBINARY/VARCHAR column, but support for the former varies greatly from vendor to vendor. In 1.1.Beta3, the length was not specified, which resulted in the database picking a default length. In some cases the default was as small as 255 chars/bytes, which was unacceptable. Unfortunately, it is hard to pick a value that works for all databases, drivers, versions, etc. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4129790#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...