Hi Dawa if you generate your xml like this CURSORTOXML("mycursor", "lcXML", 1, 0, 0, "1") you shouldn't get any prbs loading the data into .net dataset, what happens is that empty dates in vfp will become dbnull's in the .net datatable.

>Hi all,
>
>I've got a web app which calls a method of a VFP component, which returns an Xml string. This Xml string is read into a dataset. There is a date field in this Xml. A problem occurs if the date field is blank when the Xml is being read into the dataset. The error message says: "The string '' is not a valid AllXsd value". So from the VFP component I'd like to pass the .NET minimum date if that field is empty. However while .NET minimum date is 1/1/0001 12:00:00 AM , VFP would only allow me set the date to as early as datetime(100,1,1,0,0,0).
>
>What I'm doing now is to pass VFP's date(100,1,1,0,0,0), then check it in the web app and convert it to .NET's minimum date time.
>
>Is there a simpler way to handle this?