At first, I would have thought the answer is 'no', it isn't XML behind the scenes when going from one middle-tier component to another one, but...

...the methodology that was described in the last UT Magazine [where you can pass a dataset to a VFP component, receive it inside the VFP component as XML, convert it to a cursor to perform a set-based operation, and then convert it back to XML) seems to *possibly* suggest that it is still XML behind the scenes, since that's the way the VFP component would 'receive it'.

Thanks John (and Cathi)...
Kevin