Hi, I am attempting to execute an XQJ prepared expression that uses an external bind variable that accepts an xml element, and inserts it into the database document: declare variable $inserto as element(*,xs:untyped) external; let $root := basex:db('Annotations')/Annotations return (insert node $inserto into $root) I prepare the above statement and I bind DOM element as follows (groovy syntax): eltype = conn.createElementType(null, XQItemType.XQBASETYPE_ANYTYPE); ixpr.bindNode(new QName("inserto"), irel, eltype); irel is dom element that serializes as follows: <inserto id="6"> <testo>six</testo> </inserto> unfortunately I get an NPE when I try to execute the Query: groovy:000> rs = ixpr.executeQuery() ERROR java.lang.NullPointerException: null at org.basex.query.item.FElem.copy (FElem.java:214) at org.basex.query.item.FElem.copy (FElem.java:1) at org.basex.query.item.FElem.copy (FElem.java:210) at org.basex.query.item.FElem.copy (FElem.java:1) at org.basex.query.expr.Constr.add (Constr.java:107) at org.basex.query.expr.Constr.<init> (Constr.java:53) at org.basex.query.up.Insert.atomic (Insert.java:60) at org.basex.query.up.Insert.atomic (Insert.java:1) at org.basex.query.expr.Expr.iter (Expr.java:53) at org.basex.query.QueryContext.iter (QueryContext.java:322) at org.basex.query.QueryContext.iter (QueryContext.java:290) at org.basex.api.xqj.BXQDynamicContext.execute (BXQDynamicContext.java:247) at org.basex.api.xqj.BXQPreparedExpression.executeQuery (BXQPreparedExpression.java:54) at groovysh_evaluate.run (groovysh_evaluate:10) ... I am using BaseX 6.1 Am I doing anything wrong? Stefano