>>My problem (I think) now is that I do not get the empty string after first tag (Changed) that has empty element. At least my test is still failing although I am now getting very close to the desired output.
>
>Sorry I can't help with this, but once again I encourage you to consider manipulating relational data with xml is about the most painful thing you can do and would be my first tip off that there is the design flaw that make everything about 100 times more complicated than it has to be.

The data are already stored that pseudo-xml way in the text field. We just need to return them formatted the way I showed.

I got what I need, though, with my latest code (at least it seems to be producing visually identical output even though my unit test is still failing).

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/xmlandnetfx/thread/a1d05853-53da-43da-80ff-4b64a3c6919a