I have a Postgres database encoded in UTF-8. I am using Perl with the following modules:

use DBI
use XML::Generator::DBI
use XML::SAX::Writer
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to extract data in the Postgres database to an XML file using a query customised from this very website! :

use DBI;
use XML::Generator::DBI;
use XML::SAX::Writer;

my $dbh = DBI->connect("dbi:Pg:dbname=postgres;host=MYHOST;port=2278",
                      username,
                      password,
                      {RaiseError => 1},
                     );

my $handler = XML::SAX::Writer->new( Output => 'foo.xml' );

my $generator = XML::Generator::DBI->new(
 Handler => $handler,
 dbh     => $dbh,
 Indent  => 1,
);

$select = qq(

!!!!SQL QUERY!!!!!

);

$generator->execute(
                     $select, 
                     undef,
                     RootElement => 'root',
                        );
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This works well and I get a valid XML document as a result. My problem is that XML::Generator::DBI is outputting some of the data follows in the XML file:

<foo dbi:encoding='base64'>VGhpcyByZXBvcnQgbGlzdHMgYWxsIGZpbGVzIGhhdml
+uZyBhY2Nlc3NlcyB0byBkYXRhYmFzZSB0
YWJsZXMuDQpJdCBwcm92aWRlcyB0aGUgZm9sbG93aW5nIGluZm9ybWF0aW9uOiAgRmlsZS
+BmdWxs
IG5hbWUsIGFjY2Vzc2VkIHRhYmxl
</foo>
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The original script that created the data in the database has the following for the above base64:

This report lists all files having accesses to database tables.!xD!`!xA!`It provides the following information: File full name, accessed table

in other words, the carriage return is causing the module to convert the text to base64.

The namespace is also bound to the URL http://axkit.org/NS/xml-generator-dbi. This is correct behaviour according to the module documentation, but what I want to know is two fold:

a) why is this conversion taking place on carriage returns as I was under the impression they were allowed characters in UTF-8?

b) is it possible to somehow transform this base64 encoded string into UTF-8 so that i can actually use it?

I'm no Perl expert at all, nor Postgres for that matter, so go easy! many thanks.