code2code.info — SQL Server 2000 introduced support for retrieving data in XML format using the FOR XML clause. The .NET SQL Server data provider SqlCommand object has an ExecuteXmlReader() that allows you to retrieve an XML value directly from SQL Server. The method returns an XmlReader , which contains the XML value that is the result of the SQL query. The ExecuteXmlReader() method returns a single XML value and can only be used with SQL statements that return XML data: SQL statements with a FOR XML clause, ntext or nvarchar data type fields containing valid XML, or XML data type fields. original link