Error at Start Process smart service

Question

Hi All, 
 I am having a requirement to insert 1000 records data into database. Before inserting this data, data is sized into batches of 500, and using Start Process smart service to insert the data. By using this smart service I am starting a process model, but when the Parent Process Model reaches to this node, I am getting an alert stating "JAXB failure trying to convert value ProcessInfo, but the child process model is getting completed. 
 When I looked into server for the logs, I found below error. 
 12:31:13,475 INFO [stdout] (ajp-/0.0.0.0:8009-92) 2018-08-24 12:31:13,473 [ajp-/0.0.0.0:8009-92] ERROR com.appiancorp.expr.server.reaction.smartservicebridge.SmartServiceBridgeReaction - Exception occurred during activation of ReactionFunction {key='sys.smartService.start-process-2', class='com.appiancorp.expr.server.reaction.smartservicebridge.PluginSmartServiceBridgeReaction'} 12:31:13,475 INFO [stdout] (ajp-/0.0.0.0:8009-92) com.appiancorp.common.xml.JaxbConversionException: JAXB failure trying to convert value. 
 
 One identification is, we are getting special characters in the data i.e. "further investigation believe one of the boards is own technology required ". 
 I am using a clean function to clear all the special characters, but still I am getting this error. 
 
 Can someone help me in resolving this error. 
 Thanks in advance. 
 
 Regards, 
 Someshwar

chandu · Answer

HI Someshwar, 
Clean function will clean the characters that are not considered as printable. If possible can you make sure that the external system should not send the special characters.? Also did you find any other root cause?

aloks0189 · Answer

Hi someshwarp as per my understanding you can follow below mentioned steps to debug and resolve this issue: 
 
1. Try inserting one row (specially the one which contains the special character) if this breaks then 
 
2. Try creating an expression rule which should take a CDT , listOfSpecialCharacters_txt and the attribute name as an input and then try removing all these special characters (which are not allowed) and return the CDT (List) as a response if this expression. And persist this CDT into the database. 
 
A quick question here: 
 
1. Why are you trying to insert the rows having batch size as 500? As you are aware this will cause performance issues. 
 
2. What's the source of this data, are you getting it from some external systems of within Appian? Because when the data comes from an external system, we cannot bound/restrict them always, not to send the special characters, and hence you need to perform special characters removal. 
 
3. Prior to persisting it into the DB. is this data in your proper CDT structure? Because there are only few special characters which causes an issues while inserting them along with the characters ( without any manipulation).