Use case : I have a string variable, containing an exception stacktrace formatted as a string. I want to put this variable into the execution context so that users can see it listed in the web console and understand why the process has failed.
The stacktrace being big, I get a Hibernate exception. Verifying the length of my table varchar fields, I see the JBPM_VARIABLEINSTANCE.STRINGVALUE_ (where StringInstance variables store their values) is very limited (from the generated DDL):
STRINGVALUE_ varchar2(255 char)
<property name="value" type="string" column="STRINGVALUE_" length="4000"/>