Hi, John.

>Question is, what is the best mechanism for updating the base table from an xml document?

I won´t tell you what´s the best mechanism, because that´s very particular for each developer. I would say that an option is convert your XML document to an object, using Rick Strahl´s wwXML, and, if you´re using SPT to manipulate the data access, you can make a updatable cursor, and get the data on the object using a simply "GATHER NAME YourObject".