>I have an urgent requirement to generate XML data from an SQL database. Is there any sort of tutorial around that I could use to get up to speed in a hurry?

You can use the XMLAdapter class once you have your data in cursors (local or from any remote source). See the Code Focus article on this topic at http://code-magazine.com/focus/Article.aspx?quickid=0301092 (5 pages of HTML or you can download the PDF for the entire magazine issue).