Problem in handling special characters using FOP generating pdf

hi,
I am getting some special characters into DOM while creating bcos the data is having special chars in database. when i render PDF using FOP it gives following error:
FOPException an invalid character in XML .
can some one suggest what i can do

Thanks for help in advance

Is you XML well-formed and valid? If so, please post a minimal example of XML and XSL-FO that still exhibits the problem.

I had a similar problem with another tool that created PDF's. You need capture the special char and translate it to unicode.

it stores the special character properly in DB. once i add this value as attibute to DOM. after applying transformer and i store the output in the file, itis ocnverted to the special character in DB is ♂. I am guessing the problem is in the transformer. i tried to use encoding in trnaformer like trnasformer.setoutputproperty(outputkey.encoding,"utf-8")

it didnt help anything

This exception is due to your data contained some Special characters which is not supported by Parser while rendering into PDF Through FOP Engine.
1) Passed encoding characterless while generating XML or
2) Replace all possible special characters from XML Data while reading XML or
3) Replace these from Database completely.

FileWriter fWriter = new OutputStreamWriter(new FileOutputStream(xmlfileName), "UTF-8");

Replace these charcters at run time from XML data.