XML is designed to work on any platform. What if you are running a Unix app on a Sun box and need that data? What if you don't know what database is on the backend? No ODBC required on the client when using the web service.


>Ok,
>
>I'm gonna play a bit of devil's advocate here and ask why I would want to go to the trouble of moving data back and forth via XML, SOAP, etc. across the net when an ODBC connection to a remote SQL Server database via TCP-IP works very well - as does DCOM.
>
>Just curios ;-)
>
>Thanks,