Conclusion
This article is meant to give you a good running start on how to convert relational table data from SQL Server to XML data and vice versa, but I encourage you to explore further. You can also have the FOR XML clause generate an XML schema for the XML data, in case you need strong type setting with several applications using the same XML data. You can convert binary data such as images to XML data, making it more powerful and versatile with a wider range of applications and other databases. XML isn't going away anytime soon, so it's best to get some skills now and have some fun with it at the same time!