truncated InputStream returned with getAsciiInputStream()

Hi

I've seen a couple of discussion about this subject, and I wonder if you
could help me finding a workaround for my problem too.

I work with big XML documents, around 12000 to 15000 characters. Since
these documents were occasionnally causing me performance problems
during store operations, I tried using java.util.zip package's "deflate"
and "inflate" methods to compress my data. These method output byte
arrays, and the bytes can have any arbitrary value. Including "-1".

So now, to store my data in the database, I use BLOB instead of TEXT.
It works fine, my data is stored and retreived without any problem with
method set and getAsciiStream()... until there is a byte with value "-1"
in my Stream. If the 43rd byte is "-1", the stream has a length of 42.

The problem is that I cannot really escape the character, since it's
compressed data, and I can't just remove it assuming it's a null
character, cause it's not.

Somebody has a clue?

Isabelle