>Sergey I have a related question. I thought XML, like HTML, is supposed to be pure ASCII text characters. Why does it need to be stored in a binary as opposed to in a regular text or memo field.

An XML document is a Unicode text. See http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/REC-xml-20060816/#NT-Char and mskb #315580 PRB: Error Message When an XML Document Contains Low-Order ASCII Characters for details.