Error loading saved xml from database to form

Hi there,

I am having a problem reloading saved data to my form.  When I submit by email for testing purposes and then reload the data there are no issues, but when I submit data via a Workbench orchestration to a database and then reload the form with this same data it seems to be entering some kind of invisible data to some of the fields that were left empty before the save.

I can tell that something invisible is there because validation complains and if I enter something valid it over-writes what was there and validates without problems.  Also, when I submit by email from a form that has been reloaded with saved data empty tags, e.g. <tag />, are appearing for the fields in question whereas they are normally excluded from the xml if the fields are empty.

I am serializing the xml data in order to submit it to the database:

serialize(/process_data/xmlData, true())

I don't know if this has any relevance to the problem. 

The overall effect is I cannot successfully validate the form once it has been loaded with saved data.  Are there any ideas or known issues that might help solve this?

Thanks,

Kieran