Thanks Viv,
'Some' truth?? Sadly, for me, the truth is I've read a lot more than 10 pages, and still didn't find what I need. I can accept it can happen to me, for many reasons, one being that I'm new to this, but I am astonished that nobody here seems to know the answer. It seems the most basic thing you'll want to do on a SDE app - read and write XML.