Question on SimpleXML converting to HTML entities.

I have a script that takes a xml template then adds data into it using
SimpleXMLElement. I then save it using asXML into a mysql database.
On my development machine at home it works fine. However, on the host
it is changing the tag data into HTML entities. The version of
SimpleXMLElement on the host is PHP 5.2.5 and SimpleXML
1.151.2.22.2.35 and the version on my dev machine is PHP 5.2.3 and
SimpleXML 1.151.2.22.2.26. Did something recently change in SimpleXML
that would cause it to convert all the tags < > and & to HTML
entities?

Best Regards

Ty