Hi Rick,
Ok, now I see your point! I have made some search in some XML newgroups and I have found information (although not official but comming from MS MSXML team members) stating that the "nodeTypedValue" property doesn't work in MSXML 4.0 RTM for XSD Schemas. It always returns string representations of the elements and not the proper data types. So, the question is: is this a issue from VFP 7.0 and ADO.NET DataSets or one from MSXML 4.0 parser itself?
I you want I can point you to some links with those threads.