How to take human task values and store them in DB table

Question

Hi, I have a workflow and when I assign the task to someone I want to store some info in a database table that I created.
I have checked the box allow task and routing customization in bpel call backs.
And under the on Assign message, I put an assign bpel construct and an invoke.
in the assign construct I am trying to copy some of the elements from my humantasks_globalvariables to certain columns in my database table.
I have found out you can't copy them directly because the humantasks_globalvariables are of type string and my database columns are anonymous. So I tried using parseEscapedXML(), when I do this I get the error that
oracle.fabric.common.xml.xpath.XPathFunctionException: parseXML() expects the argument to be either a string or an XML element.
The humantasks_globalvariable I am using says it's of type string but it gives me this error.
I am obviously doing something wrong. If anybody know how to take values from a human task and store them in a database table any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

In the actual database the column types are varchar2. But when I drag an invoke from the bpel constructs I associate it with by DBadapter partner link and click the button automatically create input variables. It creates an xsd and this is what one of the elements looks like.
<xs:element name="anyvalue">
    <xs:simpleType>
        <xs:restriction base="xs:string">
             <xs:maxLength value="20"/>
        </xs:restriction>
    </xs:simpleType>
</xs:element>When I do an assign and try to assign the values from the humantasks_globalvariables xsd there types look like this.
task:title string
and the input variable I automatically generated look like this.
ns7:anyvalue <anonymous>