Hi,

>I wanted to discuss the possibility of recieving recordsets from the server using XML

I don't quite understand why you would need to do this? If the backend is SQL 2005, I'd provide a VPN connection to the SQL server and use ODBC or OLEDB just like with the local network. That's much faster than transforming data into XML and back. SQL Server via VPN works just fine on any dial-up connection provided the application has been designed properly.