Hi Anjni,
When you provide the inputs as an XML within a SOAP Envelope (which I assume you are doing here via SOAP UI) you are expected to encode the "<" and "&" characters in the enclosed XML to get the resulting string as XML.
If you are using our Designer, then encoding is done for you and the resulting connector output is an XML String for the string field. I have tested this behavior with 10.5 IS, if you see a different behavior in another version of IS, let me know.
Thanks,
Arpitha
#Integration-Server-and-ESB#Flow-and-Java-services#webMethods