John..

I understand that you are constrained by legacy issues, and that is an important issue to consider. My only point is that your point that RV's scale infinitely is incorrect.


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In 2002, IME it is mostly quicker to acquire data as a SQL cursor, work on it as required, then convert to XML, than it is to do the whole thing in XML. I note that Rick Strahl has observed the same.
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I don't argue with this. I just don't see the RV as being the best way to do it...


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Have you actually *tried* munging big XML datasets? Those things are loaded into memory and they're slow.
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Yes, and for that reason, I would not try. If there is data to munge, I would look at what I was doing. If it was aggregate reporting, I would consider Analysis Services as a way of achieving the same goal. Or, I would consider server-side components or SP's. IAC, I would not consider downloading huge chunks of data to the client...

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Cursors are not loaded in their entirety into memory, they are an order of magnitude quicker and indexing the cursor can provide more magnitudes of improvement.
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So you recommend downloading large #'s of records to the client and process on the client?? Orders of magnitude better? Maybe better than XML, but it is not the optimal way of doing things...